


Dead of Night

by atlanticslide



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: Grief, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-12-27
Updated: 2010-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s strange to think of loss as some disease that can be treated and cured, but when he tries to compare his state of mind three months after Reid to what it was like right after, all he can think is I’m better. It’s getting better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. August

**Author's Note:**

> Grief, depression, sad!Luke, but bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this. This is a post-series fix-it.

There’s a fog surrounding Luke from the moment he sees the stretcher being wheeled through the hallway. Luke sees Reid’s bruised, bloodied face, and the world, once spinning slowly on its axis, grinds to a screeching, abrupt halt. Casey was next to him just a moment ago, Bob was right in front of his eyes, and Reid was driving off in search of a heart and another notch on his “Big Damn Hero Doctor” belt. And suddenly Reid is _hurt_ and Luke can’t see anyone else around him, can only distantly hear a rush of chattered speaking, feel someone tugging at his arms, but all he can see is Reid being pulled away from him.

The hospital room feels like chaos, like a swirling, crushing typhoon, and the fog grows thicker. He doesn’t understand Bob or Tom or John Dixon, struggles to decipher the words they’re all speaking and looks to Reid for answers, but finds only more chaos. Reid wants to give up his _heart_ , but he needs it to live and Luke’s so confused, his own heart banging a rapid thrum against his ribcage.

“Reid’s gone,” they tell him, but it doesn’t make sense because he was just talking to Reid, Reid was just looking up at him and the world is suddenly moving again at an alarming speed while Luke stands befuddled, swallowed up in his fog, forgotten by the people who move around him arguing and trying to pull pieces of Reid in all different directions.

They take Reid away - “he’s brain dead then?” and “we have to move quickly on this, Luke,” and “there’s no hope” pushing Luke to sign the papers as everyone wants, and then he watches them take Reid away. He’d spoken to Reid, words tumbling out before he could call them back, and when he sits with Katie and watches her cry, the words come again in a rush, uncontrolled with each breath he takes as tears slide down his face.

They sit for a long time, Katie’s hand clasped in Luke’s, quiet after a while, and Luke sees others come and go through a haze. Soon he stops registering the regretful looks on some, the barely masked hope on others. Katie leaves eventually to lie down. Margot goes with her. Casey disappears somewhere, Luke doesn’t know or care where. He leans his head back against the wall behind his chair and closes his eyes, wonders if he’s dreaming.

 _Wake up wake up wake up wake up._

At some point Kim comes to sit with him, rub the back of his hand, watch him with deep, watery eyes. She’s always been one to know the right thing to say, and right now she says nothing, which Luke is grateful for. Eventually she leaves too, and Luke spends an innumerable amount of time alone.

Nurses, doctors, other random hospital employees who Luke recognizes come by every so often to bring him coffee. Gretchen brings him tea - “it’s better for you,” she says - and squeezes his shoulder. They ask him how he’s doing. He asks how Chris is doing in reply. They all give him the same sad, pitying look when he asks and he wonders if they ever look at their patients like that.

Police officers come to speak to him, hand him a large envelope of Reid’s things. Luke watches the paper fold and rustle against itself in his hands. He doesn’t open it; doesn’t want to see. He can hear Reid’s car keys jangling around inside.

“Can you tell me…” he starts before the police officers leave, before he can stop himself. He’s not sure what exactly he’s asking. “Do you know what happened, why he…”

The cops glance at each other. Both look grave. Luke looks down at the envelope in his hands.

“Son - ” one of the men starts, but Luke only vaguely hears him and then he’s speaking again, uncontrolled and tumbling.

“It’s just, he’s a - a _brain_ surgeon, and he’s smart, he’s so smart, how could - why would he drive over the tracks if a train was coming, why didn’t he get out of the car, I just don’t - ”

One of the cops puts a hand on Luke’s shoulder, but Luke doesn’t look up. He doesn’t want to cry in front of these men and his eyes begin to burn with the effort of holding the tears back.

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s - sometimes we just don’t have answers for these kinds of things.”

“Did he - was he in a lot of pain?” Luke hears himself ask in a small voice. He doesn’t recognize himself. “You must’ve seen him - did he suffer?”

“No,” one of the cops says. “No, he was unconscious immediately, and the paramedics gave him pain meds as soon as they got to him. He didn’t suffer.”

“You’re lying,” Luke whispers. He folds his arms to his chest, crushes the envelope against himself.

“Look, son, you really don’t want to hear about all this,” he’s told.

He closes his eyes and lets them leave him.

He thinks a lot about the accident, what it must have looked like, sounded like. Wonders if Reid was scared. Wonders how long he had to know what was happening. What was about to happen. Luke used to love trains. When he was a child, his father would take him every few weeks on trips riding the rails back and forth, from Oakdale to Chicago, just for fun, and Luke would sit with his chin on the windowsill and watch the tracks speed past, feel the rhythmic rumble of the cars around them.

He’s pretty sure he’ll never be able to ride a train again.

He wonders if he should call someone. If there’s anyone to call, anyone who would care about Reid’s death beyond a cursory, objective, _oh that’s too bad, he was supposed to operate on a patient of mine_ sort of way.

 _“So,” Luke said on afternoon over coffee._

 _“So,” Reid replied, his mouth hinting at a smile._

 _“Did you grow up in Boston?” Luke asked. It felt a bit awkward to ask these kinds of questions now, months into knowing each other, as if they were strangers on a first date._

 _“Boston?” Reid asked, his brow furrowing._

 _“Yeah,” Luke said. He pushed his empty mug away from him and folded his arms over the table, leaning forward. “You mentioned it once - Harvard Square, chess…”_

 _“Right.” Reid’s long fingers tapped absently against the table. “So I did.”_

 _“So?” Luke repeated._

 _“So?” Reid mimicked._

 _Luke rolled his eyes and huffed a laugh, tried to look angry._

 _“I know you don’t like all the bleeding heart, feelings on your sleeve stuff - ”_

 _“I don’t know if that’s exactly how I put it, actually, and bleeding heart really is the wrong metaphor - ”_

 _Luke kicked him under the table._

 _“Mr. Snyder, are you trying to play footsie with me?”_

 _Luke knew Reid was joking, trying to divert the conversation, but he leaned forward and tilted his head towards Reid’s anyway._

 _“You’ll know when I’m playing footsie with you, Dr. Oliver,” he said, trying to make his voice sound a purr and stamping down the embarrassment at such a lame line. He watched Reid’s eyes dilate, his adam’s apple bob ever so slightly, and then kicked him again._

 _Reid laughed and leaned back in his chair._

 _“Yes, I grew up mostly in Boston,” Reid conceded, smiling softly. “A few years in the suburbs too.”_

 _“Do your parents still live there?”_

 _“My parents don’t live anywhere.”_

 _Luke blinked and cocked his head back, confused._

 _“They died when I was young,” Reid clarified. His fingers began drumming the table gain, and Luke refrained from asking if “young” meant when he was a child, or sometime more recent._

 _“Oh, Reid, I’m so - ”_

 _“Don’t,” Reid cut him off quickly with a casual wave of his hand. “It’s okay, it was a long time ago. I hate false sympathy.”_

 _“You know it’s not false,” Luke said seriously. He tapped Reid’s fingers with his own, inviting Reid to take his hand. He did. Reid turned his hand so that it lay on the table palm up and Luke let his own hand rest palm-to-palm against Reid’s. He felt the thrum of Reid’s pulse against his fingertips, resting on the inside of Reid’s wrist._

 _“I know,” Reid replied. He didn’t look away._

Ali comes out eventually, tells Luke that Chris is doing well, tells him to go home and get some rest. Luke has no idea what time it is. He’s not really sure what to do with himself, but knows that she’s right, that it’ll be a while before they can be sure that Chris is out of the woods, and Luke’s hands start to shake, considering the possibility that Chris still might not make it. The fog around him thickens and he barely feels it when Ali leans forward to kiss him on the cheek.

He wanders home, unsure really how he’s gotten there, but suddenly there he is, standing stiffly in front of his parents and rambling about all of the organs Reid allowed himself to donate. He wants to throw up when he mentions Reid’s eyes, thinks of them staring up at him from Reid’s blood-stained face, and he can’t figure out what to feel.

Numbness sets in as his mother suggests looking into funeral arrangements.

“No,” Luke tells her dully, leaning to rest his forehead against his hands as he sits on the couch. “He wouldn’t want a big deal made - funeral, lots of people who didn’t really know him or like him, he wouldn’t want all that.”

“Did you guys ever talk about this?” his mother asks carefully, coming to sit next to him. His father paces in front of them and doesn’t say anything.

“I just know. He wouldn’t want that.”

So a man comes to talk to them about cremation and Luke sinks into a chair and glares at him, energy enough only to snap at him when the man dares to suggest that Luke isn’t the one who can take care of this. His parents jump to agree, throw the man out, and Luke doesn’t feel bad despite the logical part of him buried now deep in his gut, beneath layers of anguish and further layers of bland numbness, that says that there was nothing really out of line in what the man said.

Reid is dead, screw logic.

His parents leave him to go to the police station for help in tracking down any bit of blood relation Reid might have. On their way out the door his father squeezes his shoulder and his mother kisses his cheek, hugs him hard enough that his chest hurts.

Time passes. Luke’s not sure how much. He paces. He sits on the couch and runs his hands through his hair. He listens to his own harsh intakes of breath, the only sounds in the otherwise silent house. He closes his eyes and sees Reid’s bloodied face. He opens his eyes and paces some more.

After moving from the couch to the kitchen to the bed in the guestroom back to the kitchen to pour a glass a juice which he stares at for five minutes rather than drinking, Luke gives up on waiting for his parents to return and instead heads back to the hospital, half-baked plan in mind to ask around for information on Reid’s family.

As soon as he walks through the doors he realizes that being here is more about being close to Reid than actually talking to anyone. There’s a distinct aura of sterilization with a hint of bleach in the air that hits Luke as soon as he walks in, and he’s somehow twisted up and comforted all at once. He’s been in this hospital plenty of times in his life, but now that familiar feel, smell, is so bound together with Reid in his mind. He feels wrong and scared and like he never wants to leave here.

Talking to Chris is a mistake. Luke realizes it as soon as the other man opens his mouth. Chris goes on about Reid, and it’s not his fault, he doesn’t know, doesn’t know that the world is forever changed now, doesn’t know about the fog that Luke’s drowning in even though Luke feels like he’s screaming and _someone_ should notice.

 _Stop talking stop talking, please just shut up._

But for the first time since it happened, Luke finds himself unable to speak, completely unable to say _Reid can’t come see you because he’s dead_ , and now Chris is alive and Reid’s dead and Chris is probably going to get the Chief of Staff job because he’s going to live, because he’s the last man standing, and suddenly Luke has to leave the room, has to leave _now_.

He almost barrels into a hospital board member, can’t _stand_ the “I’m so sorry for your loss” and needs to get away, tears the scrubs away from his body and leaves them behind as he dashes down the hall, turns a corner, and runs smack into Bob.

“Oh!” Bob says, grabbing onto Luke’s arm to steady them both. Luke wrenches his arm away a little more forcefully than necessary. “Luke, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

Luke looks away and mumbles, “S’okay,” even though he knows that it was his fault.

“I was just coming to look for you, actually,” Bob tells him. He pulls a bit of paper from his pocket and holds it out to Luke. “I got the combination for Reid’s locker - there’s no rush, of course, but I thought you might… whenever you’re ready, you’re welcome to…”

He falters. It’s the first time Luke’s ever heard Bob falter.

Luke takes the paper, stares down at the numbers, uncomprehending. He can’t bring himself to look up at Bob. Chris is awake and looks tired, pale, unwell, but surviving. Bob’s son is going to make it, Kim’s son and Tom’s brother and Casey’s uncle and later Luke will be so, so angry with himself for it, but he hates them all just a little bit in this moment, when the world seems to be turned up on its end and they’re all going to survive it except him. _This was the best case scenario_ Ali had said and now it’s starting to sink in how unfair it is that the best case scenario means Reid is dead while Chris gets to live. They all have every right to be happy, they _should_ be happy, but he just can’t look at it right now, not when he’s destroyed.

He nods dumbly, stiffens when Bob puts a hand on his shoulder, and pulls away before Bob can say anything else sympathetic or comforting to him. His feet carry him unconsciously to the doctors’ locker room and he tries not to throw up as he thinks of the last time he was in here, watching Reid getting changed and charging out the door towards his death.

He pauses at the door, his heart hammering angrily in his chest, but he steels himself and pushes through.

The room isn’t empty, though Luke wishes it was. A dark-haired man, doctor judging by the scrubs, is there, standing half-dressed in front of an open locker. One look at Luke, though, and he beats a hasty exit, loosened tie hanging limp around his unbuttoned shirt. Luke watches him leave and feels exhausted, wonders what he looks like that people are running from.

Standing in front of Reid’s locker, reading his name printed on the plate displayed outside, running his fingers over _DR. REID OLIVER_ takes up most of the energy Luke has left inside him, and his hands can only go as far as resting against the handle for several minutes. Once he finally does work up the courage to open the locker, he wishes he hadn’t.

The sight of Reid’s lab coat cuts off Luke’s breath.

-

Holden snaps his cell phone shut with a sigh and turns to look at his - ex-wife. It’s becoming harder and harder these days to remember the _ex_ as comfortable as they’ve been around each other lately, despite how long it’s been since they were really together.

She wrings her hands and paces the length of the station room, looking back at him nervously.

“Still no answer?”

“No,” he tells her, and leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, already feeling weary and the day is still very, very young. “That’s about the tenth time I’ve tried. Looks like we’re heading to Brooklyn.”

Lily nods rapidly and tucks her hair behind her ear. Where Holden feels a sinking sort of sadness for his son, Lily appears jittery, out of sorts. He knows how much she feels for her children, how much it hurts her when one them hurts - as it does him - and sitting around the police station for the past half-hour, unable to do anything but re-dial an unanswered number again and again is making her increasingly anxious. It’ll be good for her as well as for Luke to go out to New York.

“We have to stop by the hospital first,” Lily says as she begins to gather things into her purse. “We need to get the forms for Angus to sign, for them to release the - the body.”

Holden nods, rises to his feet. “You go to the airport, I’ll go to the hospital, get the forms, and meet you there.”

She nods her okay, pauses in her packing to give him a sad smile. He has the urge to reach for her, stroke her hair back, but his hands remain stubbornly at his sides and he smiles back instead and then heads for the door.

The drive to the hospital is quick, securing the appropriate forms from hospital administration even quicker, and he’s almost back out the door and on his way to the airport when he runs into Bob.

“Holden.” Bob doesn’t sound surprised to see him.

“Hey Bob,” Holden replies, patting the other man on the shoulder affably. “How’s Chris doing?” It’s a strange sort of internal conflict he feels - Bob’s son’s health is due to his own son’s heartbreak, and his primary concern is Luke’s happiness, but he knows what it’s like as a father to watch his child suffer through an illness.

“Well, it’s still too early to know for certain, but it’s looking good so far. All things considered.” Bob is obviously trying to keep his tone even, neutral, but the tentative hope rings through clearly.

Hold is hopeful for him as well. “That’s great,” he says, meaning it as much as he’s able to with Luke’s tearful face still on his mind. He holds up the papers in his hand and says, “I’m sorry I can’t stay to talk, I just came to - ”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Bob interrupts hastily. “Luke’s up in the locker room, I believe.”

Holden’s mind stumbles momentarily. “He - what? I thought he was at home.”

Bob looks confused, expression darkening as he looks from Holden to the forms in Holden’s hand, and then back up. “Oh - oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed you were here for him. He’s been in there for quite a while, I was beginning to get concerned…”

Holden can feel the worry lines creasing his own forehead. He leaves Bob behind without saying anything and heads for the stairs, trotting up the flights with an aching sense of dread that has no real foundation - Luke has been holding up pretty well through this so far, considering, and it was Holden himself who said that his son would need some time to himself to process this - yet takes hold of him with an icy grip and pushes him to rush through the hallway, his sense of direction running on instinct.

Holden glares at the _STAFF ONLY_ sign posted on the outside of the door as he brushes past to enter the room.

“Luke…” he says softly upon seeing his son sat on the floor, leaning back against the stack of lockers with his knees pulled up to his chest and a starch, white lab coat puddled in his lap.

Luke looks up at Holden with watery eyes and a trembling jaw, and this is where, Holden knows, his son breaks.

“Luke,” Holden says again, softly, taking three long strides to cross the room and crouch down in front of his son.

Luke hiccups a breath and stares vaguely at Holden, eyes unfocused and swimming. His breath starts coming out in faster, faster, faster pants, short and airless.

“I don’t - ” Luke says, voice small, sad. He shakes his head as he tries again, “I don’t understand. I don’t - this doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t, son,” Holden tries in a soft, sincere tone.

“We were all worried about Chris, everyone was - was preparing for him to - and now Reid, I don’t understand how this…” Luke’s fumbling for his words in between quick, short breaths. Holden’s chest aches. “He was just gone for an hour, he’d just left and he said - he said that he loved me and I don’t understand what happened, Chris was sick, he was dying and Reid was just fine and now he’s _dead_ ,” and with that Luke loses his words altogether and his head pitches forward.

“I know,” Holden offers again, lost on what to say. He’s been a witness to more death, tragedy, grief than most, but never has it involved one of his children in this way. “These things just happen sometimes, they don’t make any kind of sense.”

Luke is wheezing, eyes clenched shut and anguish painted across his face. His chest is rising and falling at far too quick a clip. Holden bites the inside of his cheek and worries.

“Luke.”

Luke shudders and struggles to breathe in.

“Luke,” more forceful this time.

Luke wheezes.

“Luke, look at me,” Holden demands. He grasps Luke’s shoulders, alternately digging his fingertips in and stroking gently. “Look at me,” he says again, and notices how pale Luke is getting.

Luke shakes his head. Holden wonders if his son is even really hearing what he’s saying.

Holden’s getting worried that Luke might work himself into a proper panic attack, and gives him a small shake.

“Luke, I need you to breathe.”

“I don’t want to,” Luke says in a rush, miserable. His eyes clench more tightly shut.

“I know,” Holden says, close to breaking himself. Sad, and angry with himself, furious that in all of these last few months of vacillating from Lily to Molly and back again, worrying about his own romantic life, he never even noticed that his son was falling in love. “I know you don’t, but just trust me, I know what you’re feeling, I know, I know this hurts,” and it’s mostly the truth - he’s lost and regained Lily so many times over the decades, but while he’s never actually been privy to her death, he has been to several others’, and he has known loss and sorrow enough to be certain that Luke can recover from this.

“But you’ve gotta trust me,” he continues, cupping Luke’s jaw with one hand. “It hurts, it hurts like hell right now, but someday it’ll hurt a little less, and then a little less with each day, and you’ve gotta believe me, you can make it through this.”

“Dad,” Luke says shakily, still wheezing and grasping for breath.

“The one thing you have to do right now is just breathe,” Holden tells him. “Just keep breathing, you just have to breathe for me right now, Luke.”

Luke sniffs and leans into Holden, doesn’t open his eyes, but after a moment Holden can feel him loosening ever so slightly as he lets air in. Holden wraps his arms around his son and rubs a hand up and down Luke’s arms, back, shoulders, pulls Luke all the way in to lean fully against him.

“Just keep breathing,” he repeats, and says it again when he feels tears wet through his shirt where Luke’s head is resting on his shoulder.

“I miss him,” Luke struggles out.

“I know,” Holden replies. He can’t think of anything else to say, really.

Luke’s hands are balled up into fists in Holden’s shirt, and he’s reminded of when Luke was a little boy and would wake from nightmares, yelping loud enough to pull his parents from sleep to rush to his side. Holden feels vaguely helpless now, as he did back then, able only to sooth his son after the fact instead of preventing the nightmares altogether.

They sit like that for a long time. Holden hears the door open and close a few times, but doesn’t bother to look up. No one comes in to bother them. His phone trills from inside his pocket, probably Lily calling to see where he is, but he just holds onto Luke and lets it ring.

Eventually the wheezing, anxious breaths die down, and Holden can feel Luke’s chest rising and falling a bit more normally, if a little shakily. Holden lets them remain a while longer, though, lets Luke’s eyes dry and waits until Luke is able to pick his head up from Holden’s shoulder and sit up unsteadily.

He brushes the hair off of Luke’s forehead and tries to look his son in the eye, but Luke is still bleary, unfocused. Struggling.

“How ‘bout I take you home, son?”

Luke shrugs noncommittally, loosens his fists from Holden’s shirt to drop them into his lap. He fiddles with the hem of the lab coat still bunched up in his lap.

“Or to the farm?” Holden suggests, hoping for _some_ kind of reaction from his son.

A shake of the head is what he gets, along with a mumbled, “There’s too many people there right now.”

“That’s probably not a bad thing right now, for you to be around family,” Holden says gently. “Your grandmother’s babysitting Nat and Ethan, I’m sure she’s love to coddle you for a while too, make you some food.”

Luke doesn’t reply, his mouth set into a deep frown, looking defeated. Holden nods and pats him on the shoulder. Before he can get them both up on their feet, however, Luke grips his wrist tightly and says, “Dad…”

Holden freezes and tries to catch Luke’s eye. Luke’s gaze remains on his lap.

“I don’t know if I can…” Luke begins, and ducks his head further. Holden’s suddenly struck by how old his son has looked recently; no more hair flopping into his eyes, less slouched, more confident in himself, proud. He looks a shadow of that young man now, hiding his gaze from Holden’s and curling in on himself. “I don’t think I can - Bob and Kim and everyone out there…”

And Holden gets it. Luke’s spent the better part of twenty-four hours with a family quietly celebrating their son’s health due to Luke’s loss, and it’s not nice gracious or understanding or really very _Luke_ at all, but it is understandable that he’d have at least a few moments of resentment. Everything has gone right for the Hughes’ but terribly, terribly wrong for Luke. And for Reid.

“Okay,” he says, pushing himself up off the floor. Luke remains where he is. “Just sit tight a minute. I’ll be right back.”

He finds Tom and Casey meandering in the hallway outside of what he assumes is Chris’s room, unfortunately located just down the hall from the locker room. They both straighten up and smile stiffly when they see him approach.

“Holden,” Tom says by way of greeting, reaching out to shake Holden’s hand.

“Hey Tom, Casey,” Holden sighs.

“How’s Luke doing?” Casey asks.

“Not good,” Holden replies, unwilling to lie or coddle them. His phone starts ringing again so he jumps right to the point, reaching without looking at it to turn the ringer off. “Look, guys, I hate to ask this, but Luke’s back there - ” he thumbs over his shoulder “ - and he’s having some trouble… I think it might help him, uh, not to see you guys right now.” And Holden feels like a huge asshole, especially at Casey’s uncomprehending frown, but Tom, thankfully, gets it immediately and pulls his son gently by the elbow.

“Sure, sure, of course,” he nods and claps Holden on the shoulder, all no hard feelings. “C’mon, Casey, lets go grab a cup of coffee.”

“Sure, uh.” Casey still doesn’t quite grasp it, but he says to Holden anyway, “hey, tell Luke to call me… well, whenever he’s ready he can call me.”

Holden nods and then, coast clear, he heads back to collect Luke. Getting him up and out the door is easier than expected; Luke’s pliable, unfocused, easy to maneuver with a hand on his elbow, an arm wrapped around his shoulders. People watch them from the corners of their eyes, pretend not to notice Luke struggling to keep himself together.

The car ride is silent, words obsolete at this point. Nothing much else will heal this hurt save time, so Holden stores up all of his comfort for the steady hand rested on Luke’s shoulder as drives and the weight he takes on when Luke leans into him as they walk up to the house.

Noisy chatter assaults the pair as they walk in through the kitchen, though only Faith and his mother break off from what they’re doing - baking with the kids, by the looks of it, and messily - when he and Luke enter.

Faith’s eyes are big, instantly watery and cheerless, sympathetic, and she says, “Luke,” like she’s itching to run over to her brother. His mother pats Faith’s hand, gives he and Luke a deep, sad look.

“Luke!” Ethan exclaims, attention momentarily pulled away from his task of, apparently, eating bits of dough from the bowl. He jumps from his chair to come dashing over, latching himself onto Luke’s knees. “We made cookies!” he exclaims.

Holden feels Luke stiffen, his whole body going rigid. A glance up tells him that Natalie isn’t sure what’s going on, but has picked up on the tension. She fidgets in her chair, looks from her father to Luke and back again, and makes no move to come over.

Luke pulls Ethan’s arms away, firmly putting some distance between himself and his brother, something Holden’s never, ever seen him do. Ethan doesn’t question it, though, just turns his attention to Holden and holds his arms out, asking for a lift up. Holden obliges, comforted by the small, welcoming arms wrapping around his neck and the fact that Ethan is too young to really understand what Luke’s feeling.

“Luke, are you - ” Faith begins, but at that Luke has apparently had enough, and he turns to head back out the door.

“Luke?” Holden calls after him, Luke’s pale, breathless frame a stark image in Holden’s mind.

“It’s okay, Dad.” It’s not okay, they all know it, but Luke’s mumbled reassurance at least lets Holden know that he can be left alone for a while. “I just need some air.” He lets the screen door close with a bang behind him, shuffling footsteps carrying him towards the pond.

“Dad,” Faith turns to Holden, imploring, sad.

He doesn’t say anything, shrugs instead and shakes his head, sets Ethan down with a sigh and a kiss to his head, and starts back out to go meet Lily at the airport and try to track down this long lost Uncle Angus.

-

“A hero,” Noah calls him, and it makes Luke unreasonably angry. The one person he’d expected to speak the truth, had expected not to coddle him or Reid’s memory, falls back onto the same line of B.S. that everyone else around is spouting off.

 _Just say what you really think!_ Luke screams in his head. He’s so angry, suddenly, and he wants Noah to be happy that Reid is dead just so he can yell and rage at him. At _someone._ He just desperately wants to blame someone for this, and he feels guilt, twisting and hot, creeping over him. _It’s my fault. I brought him here, I made him stay, he stayed for me, I kept Chris’s secret along with him, I let him drive to Bay City alone…_

They didn’t have a chance for so much, but they loved each other anyway. They were in love. And now they’ve missed out on everything and Luke is just so angry, he can’t even see Noah in front of him anymore. He just sees the train, the crossing, sees Reid gunning the gas, pushing, pushing, always pushing the limits, and Chris gets to live out his life and do all the things with Katie that Luke and Reid won’t. It all gets muddled and confused in Luke’s head, he can’t sort out who to blame or who he’s angry with, and he doesn’t notice that he’s babbling until Noah reaches forward to stop him. He hadn’t even realized that Noah’s still there.

He loves Noah, will always love Noah, but life just isn’t fair.

-

He says goodbye, but he’s not sure if he means it.

-

They go back to his mother’s house after scattering Reid’s ashes. Noah leaves with a promise to come see him before he leaves for L.A. Luke’s not sure if he cares. He just wants to sleep, maybe forever. He wants not to exist for a while.

Faith, Natalie, and Ethan are there when they get home, and Luke brushes past them, still unable to deal with any of his siblings - Faith’s sad eyes, Ethan’s oblivious excitement, their attempts at comfort. Luke doesn’t want any of it right now.

He hears Ethan call his name as he walks up to his room, hears his brother ask anyone, “Why is Luke sad?” and his mother’s voice replies, carefully, “Sweetie, someone Luke loved very much died, and he’s very sad about it. He’s probably going to be sad for a long time…” and that’s when Luke shuts his bedroom door, shuts out his family’s voices, and collapses heavily onto the bed.

He doesn’t sleep for a long time. He stares at the wall opposite him and thinks about Reid lying dead on an operating table. He thinks about Reid’s smile. Thinks about wasted time.

Regrets burn through him.

 _They were making out up against the door at Luke’s house, Reid tonguing Luke’s lower lip as Luke vacillated between wondering if he was ready to move this to the bedroom - any bedroom, fast, and his straining erection was screaming_ yes! For fuck’s sake, **yes**! _\- and total mindlessness. He tried to ease himself away, clear his head up, but Reid’s hands were stroking his sides , flitting up under the hem of his shirt, and he just did not want to back away from the other man._

 _“We should probably move somewhere a little less conspicuous,” Reid mumbled against Luke’s throat. “Anyone could catch us here.”_

 _Luke laughed softly, “isn’t that part of the fun? Out where we could get caught at any moment?” He moved to suck a deliberate hickey into the skin behind Reid’s ear, loving the way Reid squirmed against him._

 _“Not when your mother already seems to hate me, not so much,” Reid breathed. His fingers toyed with the skin at Luke’s waist. “Imagine what she’d do if she caught me defiling her darling son up against her front door.”_

 _Luke pulled back at that, looked Reid in the drowsy, heavy-lidded eye. “Please don’t mention my mom when we’re making out.”_

 _Reid gave a shudder - not so much in the good way - and nodded, but didn’t move back to Luke. Instead he continued to stare at Luke in the eye as his fingers found the scar cut into the skin under Luke‘s ribcage. He stroked it gently, moving across the length of it and back, and stared at Luke._

 _Luke would have expected curiosity, confusion, something other than look of patience written across Reid’s face, but something in his eyes said, I can wait, and Luke finally said, “You can just ask, you know. I know you’ve noticed it before, I know you’ve been wanting to ask for a while.”_

 _“What happened here?” Reid spoke low, voice full._

 _Luke would have rather go back to where they were a few minutes before, hating this topic, but he didn’t back down from Reid’s stare._

 _“Kidney transplant,” Luke replied. Reid’s hand found his. Their fingers tangled together, resting against Luke’s side. “When I was fifteen.”_

 _“Yeah.” Reid’s hand squeezed Luke’s. “Read that in your medical charts.”_

 _Luke pulled back, feeling burned. “You what?”_

 _“I told you I read up on you as soon as I got stuck in this place,” Reid said, still all calm composure._

 _Luke felt a bit ill, as if all of his secrets were suddenly out on display for all to see. He pulled his hand from Reid’s and took a few steps back._

 _“I didn’t think that included my medical records.”_

 _Reid shrugged, and anyone else probably would have looked sheepish at that. “I was annoyed with you.”_

 _“Probably an understatement.”_

 _“A very big one, yes.”_

 _“Because I kind of hated you when you first got here.” Luke’s hands sat on his hips, stance challenging._

 _“I think I hated you as soon as I took your phone call,” Reid shot back. “More so when I thought that you were trying to throw your money in my face like you would a servant. Checking up on your medical history seemed like a drop in the bucket by comparison.”_

 _“That can’t be legal,” Luke accused._

 _“It is if I feel there’s need for a consult. I thought you were out of your mind.” Reid shoved his hands into his pockets._

 _“Ethical, then.”_

 _“Right, and you blackmailing me in order to drag me out to The-Middle-of-Nowhere-Dale,” Reid replied, no heat to his words. “That was entirely moral and sound.” He paused and Luke chewed on his lip, unprepared to agree or deny._

 _“I am doctor, Luke,” Reid continued, moving to sit on the couch. “I know a surgical scar when I see one. I would’ve figured it out anyway.”_

 _Luke shook his head, unsure whether or not to be angry. Mostly he was confused._

 _“What happened?” Reid asked again, softer. “How come you haven’t told me about it?” He reached again for Luke’s hand, but Luke dodged him, coming to sit on the coffee table._

 _Luke sighed. “I picked up an infection in Mexico,” he said, skipping over the hows and whys that had brought him there in the first place. “It got pretty bad, or so I’m told. I don’t really remember much about any of it. Nothing was working, I really needed a new kidney, but the doctors couldn’t find a viable match for me.”_

 _And he related most of the story, let Reid take his hand and pull him over to the couch when his voice cracked as he talked about his downward spiral following the surgery, waking up half-drunk to his grandmother’s_ why do you want to die?

 _“Well she was right,” Reid mumbled into Luke’s hair as he held Luke’s head to his chest. “You’d better take care of that kidney, or I will be so damn pissed.”_

 _Luke smiled, but didn’t feel enough to laugh._

 _“Don’t ever do that again,” he said as he stroked his thumb over Reid’s knee. “Going through my medical records. Invading my privacy.”_

 _“Promise,” Reid replied, pressing a kiss to Luke’s hairline._

His mother comes in some time later with a softly spoken, “Luke? Honey?”

He’s awake, but he lays still and silent and pretends that he’s not. He can hear her sigh and approach him so he closes his eyes, wills her to go away. She’s quiet, still for a moment, probably watching him “sleep” before untying and pulling his shoes off for him. She pulls a blanket up to curl around him. Tears pinprick at the back of his eyes.

She leaves him alone and after a while, when no one else comes in to bother him, Luke thinks, _what the hell?_ and lets himself sink into sleep.

-

He wakes when there’s sunlight filtering through his curtains, spilling across the floor around him. He remembers immediately, an aching clench in his gut, and sees no point to being awake. His eyes fall closed and he slides back to unconsciousness.

-

He wakes again, blinks open his eyes and lets out a sigh. He doesn’t want to be awake.

Rolling over, he finds that someone - his mother, probably - has left him a sandwich on his bedside table. It brings silly, stupid tears to his eyes. He wonders how long everything around him will remind him of Reid.

He feels a bit nauseous at the thought of food, but picks at it anyway, eating one piece of the sandwich at a time - lettuce, then tomato, then turkey, then bread, surprised at how hungry he is once he actually starts eating.

Then he rolls back over and goes back to sleep.

-

He gets up. No idea what time it is, or even what day. Wanders downstairs to find his mother modeling a dress for herself in the living room mirror.

“Luke!” she gasps when she notices him, and whirls around to face him, a smile to mask her embarrassment. “I didn’t see you there, um - new dress for Carly and Jack’s wedding,” she explains, a bit more sheepish than Luke usually sees his mother.

“It’s nice,” he says, wondering when the hell Jack and Carly got engaged yet again. He plops down on the couch, not really sure why he’s up and awake, feeling exhausted, sluggish.

His mother comes to sit in front of him, holds one of his hands between both of her own.

“Sweetie, how’re you feeling?” she asks him, rubbing his hand.

“M’fine,” he replies, quickly enough that she tilts her head and gives him what he likes to think of as her _bullshit, honey_ look. “Mom, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Okay,” she says, rubs his knee. He’s still wearing his jeans and green shirt that he may throw away, from days ago, and feels pretty gross when he starts to think about how long he’s been in these clothes, but if his mom notices, she doesn’t seem to mind. “Do you want something to eat? I could make you something, or we could go out - ”

He shakes his head at that. There’s nothing in him that wants to go out right now or see anyone outside of his family.

“Where is everyone?” he asks, taking in the quiet of an empty house.

“Your dad took the girls dress shopping, and Ethan’s taking a nap.”

He nods slowly, then closes his eyes.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” his mother asks him after a moment. “Get some fresh air. You’ve been way too cooped up in this house.”

“I’m really tired, Mom,” he sighs. “I think I’m going to go back to bed, actually.”

“Luke, you’ve been sleeping for - ”

“I know,” he cuts in, standing from the couch. He feels zapped, doesn’t even want to move enough to trudge back up to his room. “I’m just really tired.”

She lets him go. He changes into a pair of sweatpants and notices as he’s changing Reid’s lab coat sitting folded on his desk chair.

Luke hesitates for a moment before bunching it up overtop of one of his pillows, and rests his head there to fall back into sleep to Reid’s scent.

-

He dreams of Reid, the first dream he remembers despite endless hours of sleep.

They’re sitting leaned against a tree trunk - Reid against the tree, Luke against Reid - and Luke feels light, soft.

 _I don’t understand why you had to leave,_ he says, plays with Reid’s fingers and feels Reid’s chuckle.

 _Who says I’m gone?_ Reid replies easily.

Luke feels relief, intense like nothing else ever, happy, happy relief, and he kisses Reid’s hand.

When he wakes, it’s with a burst of horrifying disappointment, the wound ripped open and fresh once more.

“God,” he says to his empty room as he struggles to control his breathing and presses his wet face into Reid’s lab coat, still bunched up beneath his head.

Struggling to hold onto the last wisps of the dream, Luke closes his eyes and tries to will himself back to sleep.

-

“Luke?” his mother’s voice cuts into his sleep, destroys whatever dream he was having that he forgets as soon as his eyes open.

He tries to focus on her, standing in the doorway. Ethan is lingering behind her, peering around to get a look at his brother. Luke swallows the sleep stuck in his throat.

“Katie’s called for you a few times,” his mom says quietly, as if trying not to really wake him, like he might explode if she does. “She said she’s tried your cell, but it’s going straight to voicemail.”

He blinks at her slowly a few times, tries to rouse his mind. He rubs his forehead and swallows again, struggles to focus.

“I…” his speech sounds slowed, slurred even to his own ears… “think the battery’s dead. Needs to be charged.”

She nods and repeats, “She’s called a few times. Other people have too, want to know how you’re doing.”

Luke nods, doesn’t know or care what the point of this is. He’ll rejoin the world when he’s ready and doesn’t really care what it has to say to him right now.

His mother stands a minute longer at his door, waiting for something though Luke is unsure what, before she nods and goes back out, closing the door behind her.

Luke sighs, long, and sits up, fishes for his jeans lying in a heap beside the bed to find his phone.

Upon plugging it in and turning and watching the screen light up with life, he finds a dozen voicemails, twice as many missed phone calls, from a variety of people - Katie four times, Bob twice, Noah twice, Jack once, his grandmother seven times, a few hospital board members once each, his secretary at Grimaldi Shipping once, Casey and Ali once each… the list goes on. He doesn’t listen to any of the messages.

He stares at his phone for a long time, mind idle and listless.

His hand shakes. He shouldn’t, it’ll just make it hurt worse, but he scrolls through his contacts list to _Dr Jackass_. He’d shown the name he kept Reid’s number under to Reid weeks ago, never changed even after his feelings for the other man had. Reid had laughed and shown Luke his own phone, where Luke’s number was listed under _Cute Rich Brat_.

He presses the call button and startles when, a moment later, Reid’s ring - "Don’t Stop Believing," the real version, added by Luke last week to annoy Reid and never changed, despite Reid’s protests that it was about as far from professional as a world class neurosurgeon could get - sounds from the envelope given to Luke back at the hospital, lying forgotten on his desk.

The ringing lasts less than a minute. Luke is surprised that the phone survived the accident, and something about that seems disgustingly unfair. Finally it ends and Reid’s voice filters through the phone and into Luke’s ear, blessed and droning, sounding bored and proper, and it’s as comforting and sweet as it is horrible. Horrible, horrible, it knifes at Luke, and he listens to the whole,

_This is Doctor Reid Oliver. I’m unavailable at the moment, please leave your name and number and I may attempt to take time out of my busy schedule to return your call._

Luke loves that message. _Ever the professional, Reid,_ he thinks, and chokes on his grief as he throws his phone against he wall, watches with dim satisfaction as it splinters into several pieces, and cries.

-

He gets himself up and into the shower when dusk is settling in, though he’s still not sure what day it is. Reid died on a Tuesday, Luke will always, always remember, and now it’s… Friday, maybe. Or Saturday. He’s not sure. Doesn’t really matter.

After he’s showered and dressed in fresh clothes, finally - his skin was beginning to protest - he heads out of the safe cocoon of his room and finds his mother sitting with Carly in the living room. Their animated chatter grinds to an abrupt halt when he enters the room, and he wants to run back and hide in his room.

“Luke,” Carly says, staring him in the eye soberly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Luke closes his eyes, resists the urge to spit out at her, _you don’t even **care** , fuck your useless sympathies._ “Thank you,” is what he says, polite as ever, and twists his hands as he sinks down to sit in a chair nearby.

His mother rises to come stand next to him, stroke the hair back from his forehead. “How’re you feeling?”

Her concern is as stifling as ever. He bristles, perhaps a bit too much, and bites out, “I’m fine, Mom.”

“Getting yourself up, showered, must be a help,” she continues, though he’s sure she realizes how uncomfortable he is. She’s never really cared when she’s pushed too much.

He shrugs, doesn’t care to answer.

“Hey, Carly and I were just finishing up and I was going to order some dinner,” his mother says, tone light and trying to be sincere. “Why don’t you run down to Al’s for me and get us some food?”

Luke releases a tense breath at the suggestion and shakes his head quickly. “I really don’t - ”

“It’ll just be a quick trip, there and back,” she pushes. He doesn’t say anything. “Twenty minutes. You really need to get out for a bit, Luke. Only for a few minutes, just get some fresh air, a short change of scenery.”

“Mom,” he whispers on the edge of desperation. He knows that she’s right, he can’t stay inside sleeping forever, but he just doesn’t have the energy for it.

“I’m not asking you to go sit in on a board meeting at the hospital,” she tells him, firm and serious and every bit the mother he loves and can’t stand sometimes. “I’m asking you to go get me a sandwich.”

Closing his eyes, he sinks back into the chair for a minute and then sighs, “Yeah, okay.”

When he opens his eyes, his mother is smiling her victory, and she cards her fingers through his hair. It helps, somehow.

So he drags himself from the house and forces his feat towards the diner. Along the way he runs into Parker, who gives him a flip, “Hey, Luke! I’m sorry about, uh… your boyfriend, man.” Luke mumbles his thanks and keeps walking past him.

Once he reaches the diner, Luke shoves himself into the corner of the counter and rattles off his order quick, unsteady, feeling raw and vulnerable.

People chat away all around him. The noise of it beats against his head. It hurts to hear people laughing all around him, like he’ll never feel that again. And it hurts him even to think that, that others don’t deserve their own happiness.

The bell on the door jangles and with it comes Henry’s and Barbara’s voices, mingling together with their own laughter. He closes his eyes and hopes that they don’t notice him.

But as Luke’s luck has not changed in the last several days, Henry’s voice cuts off abruptly and then he’s sitting at the counter next to Luke, all sympathetic frown and concern.

“Luke,” he breathes like he means it. “I was so sorry to hear about Reid.”

Luke laughs, a sharp, barking thing without mirth. He shakes as he turns to Henry, the last straw.

“Why?” he asks, unashamed of the bitterness in his voice.

Henry replies, confused, “What?”

“ _Why_ are you sorry?” Luke presses, content to see a blush spread across Henry’s face. “You didn’t like him. You never liked him, why would you be sorry that he’s dead?”

Barbara comes up behind Henry, lays a hand at his back and looks towards Luke, worried. Henry’s expression changes instantly, looking like he understands Luke fully, which doesn’t make any kind of sense. He shakes his head and says, “No, I didn’t like him. He was a jerk.”

Luke is surprised at that, narrows his eyes at Henry sharply.

“But, Luke, not liking someone, not getting along, is very different from wishing them harm,” Henry continues full of warm honesty. “Even if I did often hope that he would be inflicted with some kind of irritating, itching, rash-causing bacteria. Or something.

“And I care about you,” Henry goes on. He doesn’t pat Luke on the shoulder, or touch him at all, and Luke is grateful. “I’d never want to see you get hurt like this.”

Luke’s not sure what to say, or if he can even speak at all past the tears welling up inside of him. His vision is blurry, and he nods and looks away.

When he says, “Thank you,” quietly a moment later, he means it. For the sympathy and the honesty that no one else will admit.

“Maddy’s asked about you a few times,” Henry speaks to the side of Luke’s head. He doesn’t try to catch Luke’s eye, allows Luke to pretend they all can’t see the tears. “Said she’s tried calling you. You should give her a call sometime, she’d love to hear from you.”

Luke nods, hurried, and swipes at his tears. “I will,” he chokes out, gets himself together. “Thanks.”

His food arrives, thankfully, and he tosses the money on the table, turns to leave at first without another word to Barbara and Henry, but turns back at the door to face them, look them both in the eye, and say, “I forgot to say - congratulations on your wedding. I’m really happy for you guys.”

They both smile at him, gently, and he leaves, feeling better, somehow, than when he’d left the house. At least more able now to deal with being around other people, and he walks a little calmer, breathes a little easier on his way back home.


	2. September

He dreams of Reid again.

In it, Chris and Janet and Jack and John are standing over Reid’s body, motionless and full of gaping holes where his organs have been ripped from him. Luke comes closer, Jack tries to pull him away, but Luke struggles against him, and then Reid sits up from the operating table and turns to face him with no eyes in his head.

Luke wrenches himself from sleep, unable to scream. He wants to push himself into a corner, feeling terrified and shaking, can’t figure out what he’s even scared of, exactly - the dream or the reality or a mix of both - but he wants to be done with this all, wants to be done with being so weak and weak-willed. Reid would smack him on the back of the head for how he’s been hiding out alone and afraid, so he tells himself _just a dream, just a dream, it was just a dream_ even though it wasn’t, entirely, and takes deep breaths in and out, in and out.

He doesn’t fall back asleep, and instead watches TV, bland and terrible reruns of old sitcoms at this late hour, until the rest of the house wakes.

Ethan is happy to see him up and about, it seems, and Luke lets his brother clamber up onto his lap at the breakfast table. He doesn’t entirely feel the enthusiasm he puts on for Ethan’s sake, but he does feel the thanks he gives when Natalie quietly holds out the last of the Cheerios box for him.

An hour later sees most of the house bustling, getting changed and hair combed and makeup done for the wedding, and Luke still in his sweatpants.

“I really wish you’d come with us,” his mother says as she puts her earrings in.

Luke looks up from the newspaper he’s been browsing. “I know. I’m sorry. Give them my best, just - I just don’t think I can do it right now.” It feels like a copout, but much as he loves both Jack and Carly, if he has to sit and watch them go through the motions for another time, watch them stare lovingly into each others’ eyes, listen to them talk about love and happiness and the like, he’s pretty sure he’d scream.

“Okay, well,” his mom replies, for once not pressing the issue. “Not that I’d like to give this woman anything that she wants, ever, but. Your grandmother called. She’d really like to see you.”

Luke nods his okay, ties Ethan’s little tie for him when he comes to stand in front of Luke. His mother leaves the room before he can admonish her for the snide tone of her comment.

He calls his grandmother after everyone leaves for the wedding, makes a date to meet her later for coffee. She sounds not quite herself on the phone.

When he arrives at Java, much more steady on his feet than his last venture out of the house, it takes just one look from his grandmother to crack through his composure.

“Oh, darling,” she says when she sees him, rises from her seat at one of the small tables to rush over to him in her own graceful manor, tears already formed in her eyes. She doesn’t say that she’s sorry or ask how he is, but wraps her arms around him and rubs his back, holds onto him when he allows himself a moment and a few tears on her shoulder.

She smiles at him kindly when they part, pats him on the cheek, and they sit down to coffee.

They make small chitchat for a while, talk about Noah’s going off to L.A. - “And how do you feel about that?” his grandmother asks, and Luke shrugs, replies, “I’ll miss him, but we’ve been over for a long time, long before we broke up, I think. It’s time for him to move on to bigger and better things,” not sure what he means by it exactly - talk about Barbara and Henry’s wedding - “What I would’ve given to be a witness for _that_ fabulous event,” his grandmother says - talk about the latest potential reconciliation between his parents - “Who knows,” Luke says, somewhat exasperated.

Neither of them mentions Reid or Chris or any of the Hughes family until his grandmother adjusts her seat and tells him that she’s been thinking of “his young man,” which makes Luke smile, genuinely for the first time in days. She’s always been the quickest to attune to Luke’s feelings; he’s pretty sure that his parents still don’t fully know what to make of his feelings for Reid, even now, but his grandmother seems to know without ever having met Reid what they were to each other.

When they broach the subject of the Great Walsh Feud, Luke feels his anxiety rise all of a sudden, hit with a flash of Reid saying _I love you_ and kissing him, thinks for a brief moment on all of the things they could have done if they’d had the chance, and feels himself getting frantic at the idea of wasted time, especially when it’s his family’s historic stubbornness that’s the cause.

“Go!” he tells his grandmother, worked up enough that when Noah arrives on the heels of his grandmother’s departure, he continues a muddled rant about lost chances and going for what you want, desperate to work out why Reid is gone.

“He was so calm,” Luke says, detached, focused on Reid lying so still and placid in that hospital room, the fight all gone from him. He just wants to understand why Reid gave up, on life, on them, on what they could’ve had in the future, figure out if it really was giving up at all.

Noah’s voice, his presence, is reassuring, his touch a familiar comfort, but Luke hedges when Noah continues to praise Reid as if they’d actually been friends, as if he’d actually liked Reid. Noah switches gears, then, reminds Luke of the people saved by Reid donating his organs, reminds Luke of the work done for the hospital, the work Luke still can do for the hospital, and Luke can feel his head clear, his anxiety ebb. He’s missed having Noah in his life, has missed especially this version of themselves, where they could speak so easily and Noah was a pillar of support rather than a source of ache and accusation. Maybe they were always meant to be friends rather than lovers. It feels easier, now, to let him go, knowing that they’ll be okay in whatever capacity their friendship has reached.

Noah will leave, go to Los Angeles and live out his dream. Luke will stay, try to focus himself on work, on making the most of Reid’s impact here. On pulling his heart out of ditch it’s stuck in. Maybe he’ll figure out his own dreams one of these days.

-

He says goodbye, and he means it.

-

He goes back to work. He goes back to the hospital board. He doesn’t visit Chris, or return Katie’s calls, but knows that he will at some point. Walking through the hospital feels both a comfort and disconcertingly empty. How strange that Reid was only here for a few months, yet his absence feels to Luke like a gaping hole, like the whole of the building is changed without him in it.

His first meeting about the neuro wing is awkward at best. Several board members tiptoe around Reid’s absence, even going so far as to leave his usual seat, across the table from Luke, empty, which Luke takes as a gesture, but makes him supremely uncomfortable.

Finally, after thirty minutes of rather stilted conversation about architectural ideas that have, in actuality, been hammered out already, Luke bites the bullet and says, “Okay, so, I think we’re going to have to look into recruiting a couple of new doctors. Neurosurgeons.”

His hands shake, and he pulls them from where they’d been resting on his notepad and hides them under the table on his lap. But he manages to keep the waver from his voice, keeps his head up and looks the other board members in the eye. He’s sure Reid would be proud of him for that.

The group around the table looks a bit stunned at Luke’s bluntness, but he’s sure they know it’s true, and he’d rather just get on with what they really should be talking about.

“Luke,” Bob says in his gentle way. “We don’t have to go about making any big decisions just yet. We can wait on that a bit, there are other matters - ”

“Not as important as this one,” Luke interjects. It hurts, a little, to hear that from Bob - _don’t make any big decisions, wait a bit_ when Luke hadn’t been given that time last week as his mind had raced and people had rushed him and Reid had been pulled away. But he doesn’t say any of it, won’t ever say that to Bob, especially, and continues forward.

“Our investors, our other donors, they’re going to start pulling out if they don’t believe in what we’re building, which is supposed to be the top neurological department in the country. We need to make sure we have the staff to back that up. With Doctor….” he falters, hadn’t expected to, but stamps down the pain his chest and continues quickly. “With Dr. Oliver gone, we can’t really say that anymore, despite the excellent neurological staff Memorial has already. I’d suggest we start looking now into lining up at least one or two top-rated neurosurgeons and other top support staff so we can have something to present to the investors soon.”

And that’s how Luke sets out going through a list of possible candidates to replace Reid, as if that were really possible, and he has to force himself to slog through the stacks of candidates - _like anyone could really replace **me**_ , Reid’s voice says in his head every so often. At the end of the month he’ll give his suggestions to the board; they’ll make the final decision, but he wants to be as involved as possible, even though it’s hard.

He thinks about Reid a lot, which is even harder.

He tries to get back to his normal life, but he’s not really sure what that is anymore. Hanging out with Casey and Ali feels like living on borrowed time, knowing that they’ll be leaving soon too. Casey suggests once, a few weeks after Reid is gone, that they spend a night in Chicago, hit up some gay bars. Luke glares at him, and Casey doesn’t bring it up again.

Mostly when he’s not working, Luke sleeps. He still feels drained all the time and has little motivation for anything more strenuous than laying around in bed, sometimes watching TV.

When he dreams, it’s usually about Reid, and whether it’s good or bad it always leaves him feeling just as exhausted in the morning as if he’d not slept at all.

He works longer and longer hours, many days seeing him head straight from Grimaldi Shipping to the hospital to meet with some board member or contractor or another, arrange interviews with new potential heads of the wing, to stare at the foundations being laid into the ground and think about how Reid won’t get to see it.

He pays Reid’s phone bill so he can keep listening to his voicemail message, torturing himself that much more each time.

-

Sometimes, when the memories of Reid’s body, battered and bloodied, overwhelm him such that he can’t even concentrate on work, Luke rubs his forehead, agitated, fists his fingers in his hair, and then calls the hospital to ask about the transplant patients who received Reid’s organs. It’s a strange comfort, but it grounds him, helps him breathe a little easier. Reid’s lungs are still breathing, eyes are still seeing. His heart is still beating, even if it’s in the wrong chest.

-

He doesn’t speak to Katie for weeks. She finally corners him outside of the hospital - says she’s there waiting for Chris, but he knows it’s a lie. He cries, wobbling chin and all, when he sees her, and she cries too, hugs him, tells him that she understands why it’s hard but wants him not to be a stranger anyway.

He still won’t go over to see her or Chris at home, but he stops dodging her calls after that.

-

A month passes after Reid’s death. It seems stupid to stay in bed all day, so Luke forces himself up and out, pretends there’s nothing wrong.

Noah emails his new address in L.A., a subtle acknowledgement of support. _If you want to come visit,_ the email says.

Maybe someday.

 _“You ever thought about moving out of this place?” Reid asked one afternoon as they sat side by side on Reid’s couch pouring over architectural plans._

 _Luke gave him a quirked half-smile, confused. “Uh, this is your apartment.”_

 _“The town, genius.”_

 _“Well I know you’ve been dying to get out of here since just about the moment you got here - ”_

 _“Earlier than that, even.”_

 _“ - But we still have a hospital wing to finish before anyone goes anywhere.” He held up the plans in his hands as evidence, smiling._

 _“I mean you,” Reid rolled his eyes. “I mean in general. When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to get out of New England, applied to colleges all on the West Coast just to get as far away as possible. Only went to med school at Harvard because they gave me the best scholarship and research offers, and when I had my choice between doing my residency in Texas or New York, well. New York’s only four hours away.”_

 _Luke loved the insight, even if it was a bit disconcerting._

 _“But you,” Reid went on. “Your parents have lived their whole lives here, you’ve lived your whole life here, you’ve never mentioned wanting to leave. You ever thought about living anywhere else?”_

 _Luke shrugged, unsure where this was going. “Thought about it, yeah, sure. Noah and I talked sometimes about moving to L.A. or New York.”_

 _“Really.” Reid looked annoyed, voice deadened, possibly with himself for bringing up a subject that opened the door to mention Noah. He leaned back into the couch and frowned, grumpy._

 _“I was going to write screenplays, he’d direct the movies.” Luke ignored Reid’s quiet temper tantrum. “Not sure if I’d ever actually go, though. Least not for a few years.”_

 _“Why not?”_

 _“Well, we all know your very intense feelings about Oakdale.” Luke gave him a glare with a smile on the end. “But I really love it here, the nature and the woods. The people, everyone knowing everyone.”_

 _“Everyone knowing everyone’s business,” Reid commented._

 _Luke laughed at that. “Yeah, that part’s not always so great. Especially when you’re the son of a prominent couple in town and you’ve just come out of the closet.”_

 _He didn’t elaborate, and Reid didn’t press him, but he could tell from the look in Reid’s eye, the concerned frown he donned, that it would probably be a subject brought up again later._

 _“But it’s also nice sometimes, having so many people around who know you, care about you. Feels like a big extended family._

 _“And that too,” he continues after a beat. “I really love my family, it’d be hard to leave them all behind. As overbearing and crazy as they can be sometimes.” Luke smiled and Reid rolled his eyes at the understatement. “And Natalie and Ethan are still really young. I’d hate to miss them growing up.”_

 _“All good reasons,” Reid nodded._

 _When he didn’t continue, Luke said after a moment, “You’re not…thinking of going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”_

 _Reid scoffed as he squeezed Luke’s hand reassuringly. “Like I’d let some other quack run our new wing.” He pulled Luke over to kiss him, a quick brush of their mouths together, and then Luke pushed him back with a smile, turning their attention back to the plans before them._

Casey tells Luke to come with him and Ali, which Luke considers for all of half a second before he shakes his head, hugs them both, and waves goodbye.

The town is getting emptier by the day. Luke still won’t leave it, though.

-

He has dinner with another board member and thinks of Reid, of every interruption they endured, every broken engagement so that Reid could run off to help Chris in secret, and wants it not to be in vain.

After, he walks hesitantly to the apartment that was, for a while, Katie’s and Reid’s, now Katie’s and Chris’s, unsure how to actually go in. He stands outside for a full five minutes before he works up the nerve to ring the bell.

When he tells Chris about his insistence that Chris be named the new Chief of Staff, he’s completely unprepared for Chris to turn him down, and anger pours out of him before he can rein it in.

“What?” he says, unable to curtail the irritation in his voice. Katie stands behind Chris, supportive, and the sight makes Luke irrationally angry and resentful. “You know Reid would be seriously ticked off at you. After everything he did for you?”

Chris put himself at risk for weeks just so he could hide from reality and challenge Reid, probably accelerated the deterioration of his heart in the process, and now he doesn’t even want the damn job anymore? Luke feels like he’s going to go crazy. He has to leave. _Now._

But Katie calls him back before he can get to the door, presents him with Reid’s stethoscope. It hurts just to hold it. He mumbles his thanks, unsure what else to say, feels torn up. He wants to get out of here, can’t be here where Reid isn’t anymore, his mind again buzzing with _I don’t understand why this happened, I don’t understand why he’s dead_ and images of Reid struggling to talk to him through the blood dripping out of his mouth.

He glances sheepishly at Chris, asks him for the strangest favor two people who don’t really know each other all that well could exchange, but Chris is more gracious than he has been in months when he smiles gently and sits back, allows Luke to listen to his heart.

The steady thrum calms Luke’s shaking hands, scattered mind, evens out his breathing.

 _Even if it’s in the wrong chest._


	3. October

When the hospital signs on a new surgeon - Dr. Amy Price, of Bridgeport, Connecticut by way of NYU Medical Center - Luke smiles politely, joins the chorus of shaking hands all around the boardroom - she had been his first choice, after all - congratulates the new head of the upcoming Snyder Pavilion, and leaves the hospital to drive straight to a liquor store.

He’d never had much of a preference as a teenager - alcohol is alcohol to a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t give a shit about his life - but as an adult, in the few times that he’s gone off the wagon, he’s tended towards the darker liquids. A good, rich scotch would be nice, or maybe sharp, golden tequila. Beer or wine would be far too reserved for this occasion - he’s shaky and in pain, can’t stop thinking of how wrong the world is right now and thinking about how easily Reid gave up, and is ready not to care for a while. Starting right now.

Buying the bottle of Jack is easy. It feels like second nature, like he does this all the time, to hand over the money, look the cashier straight in the eye, daring him to say anything as if the man actually cares. He’s calm, no debate with himself, no conscience in his head telling him to stop. He wonders if this is what committing suicide feels like.

He doesn’t go home, goes to the pond instead, sinks down into the grass just as the sun is beginning to set, and puts the bottle on the ground in between his legs.

He doesn’t open the bottle.

Now comes the hard part.

He sits for a long time and stares out at the water, rests his chin on his arms folded across his pulled up knees. He closes his eyes, sees Reid beaten and broken.

 _His injuries are severe. They’re beyond repair._ Bob’s voice. _But you didn’t even try!,_ Luke’s mind screams in response.

Luke’s breath shudders. He wants to drink, doesn’t know what’s stopping him.

 _There is no hope that he will be revived from this._ Firm. _No hope._

He can’t stand it, clutches at the bottle.

 _So he’s brain dead?_ Tom cold, detached. Luke feels nauseous. He thinks of how he’d sent Damian’s jet to Dallas, how he’d forced Reid to come here, wonders if he made the choice between Noah’s eyes and Reid’s life in that one decision, if he sacrificed Reid in every subsequent decision that kept Reid in Oakdale, kept him here to devote himself so entirely to saving Chris that he put himself in harm’s way.

 _I did this,_ he lives it and breathes it. _I brought him here, I made him stay, he’d be alive in Dallas if it weren’t for me. I could’ve gone with him to Bay City, I could’ve made him get out of the car, but I didn’t. My fault, my fault._

He can’t stop picturing Reid, dying, dying, in pain, hopeless, dead. Even when he opens his eyes, he sees blood, pictures broken bones littering Reid’s insides. He thinks of the new hospital wing and how _Reid won’t be there,_ a _replacement_ will, and he doesn’t know how to do this.

He holds the bottle, brings it up to his lap and grips the cap tight in his hand, but doesn’t turn it.

 _Why do you want to die?_ His grandmother’s voice asks, a memory that he carries with him everywhere. His hand clenches on the bottle cap, still doesn’t open it.

 _He’s not really gone if a part of him lives on in Chris,_ Luke had said himself, but he is gone.

 _There’s no hope._

He wants so badly to drink that whiskey, just plunge right in and down enough of the bottle to shut his mind up and get Reid and hopelessness out of his head.

 _I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this_ , he thinks. His mind won’t stop racing, and it hurts.

His hands are shaking when he pulls his phone out of his pocket. The bottle drops back to the ground, but he doesn’t let it get far, rests it against his leg. Even with his phone out, it takes him a few more minutes of debate with himself -

 _Just do it. What does it matter?_

 _Stop. Don’t. I don’t really want to._

 _Just a little. Everything will hurt less. And **what does it matter** anyway? Hopeless._

 _But it’s not. And a little could kill me. I don’t really want to die._

\- before he can work up the nerve to scroll down his contacts list and hit _call._

-

She tries not to worry when Luke isn’t home by the time she’s doling out dinner for her other children. He’s been working late more than not in recent weeks and it’s become a rare occasion that he takes any of his meals with the family. He spends as much time with his brother and sisters as he’s able to, she knows, but it’s always tinged with such sadness that still surrounds him that sometimes it’s hard even to look at him, and harder for him, she’s certain, to look at the rest of them.

Holden comes by for dessert, an occurrence that has become as common as Luke’s absence from the house, and they grin at each other without saying anything as he walks in, as if they’re sharing a secret between them with a couple of smiles.

“Where Luke?” Holden asks as he pulls up a chair next to Natalie, who glances between her parents, looking concerned.

Lily shakes her head and looks at her watch for the tenth time. “I don’t know. Probably still at the hospital. I tried calling him at his office but I was told he’d left for the day.”

Holden frowns and doesn’t reply, so Lily plasters on a smile and says, “He’s just been working a lot lately, I’m sure he’s fine. He’ll be home soon,” as she starts to worry.

Although it’s only half the truth. In actually, she started worrying as soon as she’d found out Reid had been killed, and hasn’t stopped since. Loss and grief take time, sometimes a lot of it, but it’s near on impossible to watch her son exist as he has been under this crushing cloud of sorrow, pulling further and further away from her every day.

Luke is someone who cares for other easily, but doesn’t casually throw his heart around, or so she’d had to remind herself many times as she watched Luke’s relationship with Reid grow even though it killed her to see his relationship with Noah wane. It made absolutely no sense to her, Luke with Reid, especially when Noah had been there too, so clearly not ready to give Luke up. It would probably boggle her forever, choosing someone like Reid over someone like Noah, how Luke could let himself fall so intensely for a man so his opposite, but seeing her son weep so brokenly over a man he’d known for less than a year sealed it in her mind that there were some aspects of her son’s relationships that she’d never be privy to and might never fully grasp.

But Luke had loved Reid, greatly it seems, and his new apathetic approach to life since Reid’s death is understandable, but almost too much for her to bear. Every conversation with him in the past few weeks feels like picking her way through a landmine, unsure of which way to go or how best to help. Luke’s rarely angry or irritable, mostly just drained and depressed, but one wrong move in any direction often sends him spiraling away from her altogether, back to work, back to bed, back away from life. Where Holden suggests they approach Luke like wild animal, quietly, softly, letting him come to them when he’s ready, Lily thinks desperately that they’re losing him to his own self destruction and indifference. It hurts too much to watch him coast through his life like a zombie, to not jump in and pull him out of whatever he’s sinking into. She’s terrified that they’re letting him drown.

Holden chats with Natalie about school, while Faith pretends not to be interested in any of them, when the phone ringing pulls Lily away from the conversation around the table, and she goes to the living room to answer it.

There’s a long pause after she picks up the phone, says her greetings, and then a wobbling, “Mom?” that vaguely resembles her eldest’s voice.

“Luke?” she says, instantly concerned. “Luke, what’s wrong, are you okay?”

Another pause, and then, “Don’t be mad.” It’s so unlike him, such an odd request, that Lily is stunned silent for a minute, unable to do anything but shake her head even though Luke can’t see it.

“What happened?” She tries to sound grounded through her fear. “Did something happen? Are you hurt? Is someone else hurt?”

Luke lets an audible, shuddering breath and then says, sounding all of a child, “I went to a liquor store after work.” It’s not the worst thing he could’ve said, but it does fill her with dread. “I think - I think I really need help. Can you come help me please?”

“Oh, baby, of course,” she says in a rush, near tears.

It’s been a struggle, his drinking, too many ups and downs sometimes for her heart to take. She hates being powerless, and Luke’s alcoholism immobilizes her - anytime he seems effectively past it, over it, something comes up to remind her that one never gets over an addiction, merely learns to live with it, and sometimes they stumble. Luke is still so young, should be able to stumble and make mistakes and get back up, but his mistakes usually come with such a hefty price.

“Have you had - did you drink anything, Luke?” she asks carefully. “You’re not driving are you?”

Holden wanders in from the kitchen, looking at her curiously. She meets his eyes, tries to convey her fear.

“I’m at the pond,” Luke answers, which is a small relief.

“Have you had anything to drink?” she asks again.

“I don’t want to,” he says, and sounds more and more distressed, strung out with each word. “I don’t want to, but I really, really want to.”

“Okay,” she tells him. “Your dad and I will be right there, just stay there.”

Luke doesn’t say anything else, just hangs up with a huffed breath that might be a sigh, and she and Holden don’t speak much either save a rushed request of Faith to watch her brother and sister, before they’re hurrying out the door.

“Did he sound like he might be hurt?” Holden asks as they drive, and Lily shakes her head, distresses, “I don’t know,” and runs a hand through her hair.

It’s dark, but they spot him instantly, pacing and looking agitated, but otherwise unharmed.

“Luke?” Holden says as he trots ahead of her, comes up beside their son to touch him gently on the elbow.

Luke backs away from them, looking wild for a moment. Lily almost trips over the square glass bottle in her rush to get to Luke’s side, and pauses to retrieve it from the ground. Relief warms her when she realizes that the cap is still tightly sealed. Luke hasn’t fallen completely yet.

“Can you please just take it away?” Luke asks her, folding his arms around his middle.

“Luke, did you drink any of that?” Holden asks slowly, speaking to a frightened animal.

Luke shakes his head furiously, then runs his hands through his hair, tugging at the strands frantically.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice broken. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep putting you through this, I’m sorry.”

Lily tries to hold back the sob in her voice, says “Oh, honey,” at the same time that Holden says, “Hey, hey, you have nothing to be sorry for.”

They both take a step toward Luke, but he takes two steps back from them, arms gone again around to hug himself.

“What happened, son?” Holden asks.

“Nothing,” Luke replies, soft. It‘s not at all what she expected to hear. “Nothing happened, I just can’t take it anymore, and I’m so tired all the time and I think about him all the time - I can’t stop thinking about how he looked and how scared he must’ve been and about his body, dead and all cut up, and I’m so tired of thinking about it.”

“So you bought a bottle,” Holden states the obvious, and takes another step towards Luke. Luke doesn’t back away this time.

“I don’t want to, I don’t want to be that person anymore - ” what person, Lily isn’t quite sure, but when tears begin to form in his eyes, light from the huge moon overhead making them glisten against his lids, she has to bite her lip, curl her hands into fists to keep from rushing over to him.

“But I can’t stop thinking about it, ever, and I don’t know how to stop being angry and - and I just hate myself sometimes and _I don’t know what to do_.”

“You hate yourself?” Holden asks. “You’ve been doing amazing work, you’ve been serious and committed and you’ve shown more maturity in the past year than most people twice your age. How could you hate yourself, Luke?”

“Because I did this!” Luke screams, unraveled. “I brought him here, I - I _blackmailed_ him to make come here, I guilted him into staying and put up the money for the new wing so that he’d stay and keep Noah here, I did all of it, if it wasn’t for me - ”

“Luke, no,” Lily says, comes over to lay a hand against his restless shoulder, but he shrugs her off and gestures wildly around him.

“Why am I always so fucking selfish?” he yells. Tears begin to escape unheeded down his face, and Lily cries along with him. “Why couldn’t I have just let Noah go back to Dallas with him? Why did I keep putting him off when he wanted to be with me? Why does it always have to be what _I_ want? What is _wrong_ with me?”

He’s frantic. She almost doesn’t recognize him.

“Luke,” Holden says, darkly serious. He grabs Luke by the shoulders and Luke finally lets him. “Do not do this. What happened was not your fault, do not take that on yourself.”

“I just keep thinking,” Luke says, softer now, calm and full of quiet despair. “Keep thinking about how life, and meeting people, all of that, it’s all chance and all of these tiny decisions.” He looks somewhere around Holden’s chest and doesn’t make much sense. “Thousands of them that you make all the time that lead you to where you’ll end up later, the people who will come in and out of your life. And maybe he and I would’ve met each other some other way, maybe we would’ve found each other some other time or something.”

Lily finally gets close enough to put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. He grabs onto Holden’s forearms, as if trying to steady himself.

“Except - except I forced it, I forced him here, and he hated it but he stayed for me and he never would’ve been in that car - ”

“You know he wouldn’t want you to blame yourself,” she says, and cards her fingers through his hair, comforting herself.

“I know,” the first calm, coherent thing he’s said. “But it doesn’t change anything. I still can’t stop thinking about it, and about him being trapped in that car, and hating Chris for being so _stupid_ and not getting any help until he was so sick that Reid had to get in the car and drive to Bay City, and I don’t like hating anyone…” he trails off, and when Lily tugs at gently at him, he goes willingly into the circle of her arms.

“I was really happy,” Luke breaks. “I just wanted it to last for once.”

She rubs his back and doesn’t say, _I know_ or _me too_ , but she had wanted that too. She’s tired of seeing her children so wounded.

-

He starts seeing a therapist. It’s his parents’ softly spoken suggestion, but he’d been thinking about it for a while as well.

He spills everything in his first hour, explaining in stale, dry words about Reid and Noah and Chris’s new heart, about his problem with alcohol and his inability to move past the stifling hopelessness and despair he’s been suffocating in since Reid’s death. It’s not until his third session, though, that he really talks and feels something when he does.

“I really hated him at first,” he says, hanging his head. “Like, really couldn’t stand him. And then I started seeing these pieces of him that… weren’t half bad. But I look back on it now and I still don’t really know how I ended up falling in love with him. I kind of wish I hadn’t,” he trails off with a sardonic laugh.

His doctor - Dr. Marilyn Kane, a squat woman in her mid-fifties with bushy hair and kind features, found on Bob’s recommendation - asks him impassively, “Why do you say that?”

Luke sighs, shrugs, wipes a hand over his face and then drops it audibly on his lap. “It’d be less painful? Life might suck a little bit less right now?”

“You feel like love isn’t worth having unless you can have it forever, then?” It’s not judgmental, the way she asks him, more calm and inquisitive, an urge for him to continue speaking, but it makes him feel a bit foolish.

Still, he answers honestly. “Right now, I do.”

“Is there anything that you think you can take from your relationship with Reid, from loving him, even though he’s gone?”

A million things, but, “none of it is worth it. Worth losing him in the end.”

Towards the end of the hour during this third session, she suggests looking into a support group. He snorts derisively, unsure why the idea bothers him.

“What, stand up in front of a group of strangers, tell them, ‘Hi, my name is Luke, my boyfriend got hit by a train’?” He gives a brief, hollow smile, then immediately grows angry with himself and shakes his head. “I hate being cynical,” he tells her by way of apology.

She looks at him understandingly, her features softened and eyes kind. “It’s understandable to feel a certain amount of hopelessness after losing someone you love.”

He nods, purses his lips, unsure if hearing that his grief is normal, typical, makes him feel better or not.

His fifth session, and it’s getting cooler outside, leaves beginning to change as autumn rolls in. Two and a half months since Reid’s death. He talks a lot about the hospital, about how the new wing is coming - minor snag with the contractors, but Luke proudly tells Dr. Kane that he smoothed it over and managed to make it back to Grimaldi Shipping by the end of his lunch hour.

She nods along as he speaks and is quiet for a moment when he finishes. “Luke, I want to ask you something.”

He nods okay, rubs his hands against his jeans.

“You’ve talked a lot about what Noah wanted, about him going to pursue filmmaking in L.A., and you’ve talked a lot about this new hospital wing and how much you want it to be everything Reid worked for, and you’ve talked about Grimaldi Shipping and how much responsibility you feel running your father’s company - ”

“Well that’s not exactly how I put it, I don’t think…” He’s nervous and he doesn’t know why. He’s never mentioned it as a feeling of responsibility to run Damian’s company, but now that she’s put it like that, he starts to wonder at his own motivations for staying connected to the father he claims to want nothing to do with anymore.

“I’m sorry if I’m putting words in your mouth,” she replies diplomatically. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, you seem to feel a great sense of responsibilities in helping those you care about fulfill their dreams, which is a wonderful quality to have, but you don’t talk very much about our own desires, what _you_ want to do with your life.”

 _He sprawled across Reid’s bed and waited for the sound of the water in the bathroom to stop, fixing a smug smile on his face for Reid to see when he returned to his room._

 _And shocked, Reid was as he stopped short in the doorway, his hand towel dropping to the floor by his feet._

 _Luke delighted in a speechless Dr. Reid Oliver. He grinned at his boyfriend._

 _“Is that an invitation?” Reid asked, sounding like he’d swallowed his tongue._

 _Luke hadn’t really meant it as such - they both had to be at work soon, and while he could stroll into the office anytime he chose (though he was rarely ever actually late), he knew Reid would be annoyed with himself to show up late for his patients. He still wasn’t completely sure that he was ready for sex with Reid - though he moved ever closer laying there, overwhelmed with the scent of the other man - and certainly not a rushed twenty minutes before they both had to be off to work._

 _But staring up at Reid now, with his dark slacks hung low on his hips, belt not done up yet, his shirt unbuttoned, Luke couldn’t really remember why they should be anywhere else but here._

 _He went with coy smile, shrugged and said, “if you want it to be,” and then Reid’s cell phone rang. They both groaned._

 _Reid glanced at the caller ID on his phone, but didn’t answer it. Instead, he turned back to Luke. “You know, you probably could’ve picked a worse time for this, but I’m not really sure when that would’ve been at the moment.”_

 _But Luke was not to be dismissed just yet, it seemed, and Reid padded over to him, leaned down to kiss him soundly, all tongue and crushing lips and Luke was dizzy from it by the time Reid pulled back._

 _“You have some toothpaste on your cheek,” Luke said upon parting, not his most alluring moment, but it made Reid smile. He swiped at the offending blue paste dabbed on the side of Reid’s face and then wiped his finger on Reid’s shirt._

 _“Hey, some of us have to look presentable,“ Reid complained as he walked back across the room to resume getting dressed for the day. “And speaking of, don’t you have somewhere to be?”_

 _“I’m the boss,” Luke shrugged, feeling every bit the spoiled rich boy this day and taking a moment to revel in it as he very rarely did. “I can show up when I want.”_

 _“So you thought you’d pop over here and give me a wicked case of distraction that will likely last my entire shift?” Reid asked, all fake congeniality._

 _“You’ve been working a lot,” Luke replied, folding his hands over his stomach as he adjusted his body across the bed, got himself more comfortable. “I’ve been working, things seem to keep coming up. Feel like I haven’t seen you much the past few days. Just wanted to grab a few minutes when I could.”_

 _He smiled when Reid blinked at him and ducked his head, looking almost bashful. Something he was sure few, if any others had seen before from Reid. The idea made his stomach flip._

 _“You couldn’t’ve shown up an hour ago and say all that shmoopy stuff?” Reid complained through his own smile._

 _“You’re grumpy when you’re up too early.”_

 _“I’m grumpy all the time.”_

 _“That too, but I guess I should amend that to I’m grumpy when I’m up too early and didn’t want to inflict that on you just yet. And the thought only really occurred to me when I was in the shower a few minutes ago.”_

 _“In the shower, hm?” Reid buttoned up his shirt and Luke was sorry to see the naked flesh go. “Want to tell me what that was like?”_

 _“No, no,” Luke replied, voice laced with playfulness. “I wouldn’t want you to be distracted.”_

 _Reid rolled his eyes._

 _“Right.”_

 _Luke watched, fascinated, as Reid went about his morning routine, luxuriating in the knowledge that soon this sight would become a regular occurrence for him. He smiled and watched Reid’s lovely, dexterous hands buttoning the cuffs of his shirt and then knotting his tie. Lovely hands. A surgeons hands. My boyfriend’s a surgeon, he thought, delighted. He watched Reid’s hands smooth over some imagined wrinkles in his shirt and Luke lost his train of thought._

 _“Here, occupy yourself with this while I use the bathroom,” was all the warning Luke got, startled from his gaze, before Reid tossed a book at him, hitting Luke square in the chest._

 _Not just a book, Luke realized upon a closer look. A blank-paged journal, bound in leather and tied around its middle. Luke was dumbfounded._

 _“What’s this?”_

 _“And here I thought you were a writer,” Reid smirked, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. “Would’ve thought you’d recognize a journal when you saw it.”_

 _“I do,” Luke laughed. “I just, uh… you bought me a journal?”_

 _“Yes, well.” Reid shrugged. “I was in the gift shop at Memorial, and - ”_

 _“What were you doing in the gift shop?”_

 _Reid shook his head, rubbed at his forehead. “It’s a long story, has to do with a kid and balloons and I really don’t want to talk about it.”_

 _Luke laughed at him, felt warm and happy._

 _“Anyway, I was in the gift shop and I saw it and… well, you know.” Again, Luke was struck by Reid’s quick swallow, the bob of his adam’s apple and slight tilt of his head, these tiny blushing gestures that he’d never really seen in the man before now. “Thought of you.”_

 _“So you bought it for me?” Touched, Luke wasn’t sure what to say. Warm and happy and touched._

 _“I saw it and thought about how you’ve talked about writing,” Reid straightened up, became more of the tall, bold Dr. Oliver that Luke was used to, and Luke wished that he would come closer. “About how you’ve mentioned that you once wanted to be a writer, but you never really seem to do much of it anymore.”_

 _Luke bit the corner of his lip, but didn’t reply._

 _“Why don’t you write anymore?” Reid asked him, serious._

 _Luke had no idea how to answer, didn’t even know what the answer was. It had been a long time since he’d really even thought about it – between his father’s death, his biological parents’ remarriage, his father coming back from the dead, his parents’ divorce, Noah’s accident, one father ending up in prison with another briefly accused of murder, taking over his father’s business, doing research to help cure Noah’s blindness, breaking up with Noah, getting involved with the hospital board, and getting involved with Reid - it was a bit exhausting just to list all of that in his head - his own personal goals and ambitions had, he realized suddenly, fallen somewhat by the wayside without his really thinking much of it until now._

 _Unable to articulate all of that to Reid, however, Luke went with, “I got expelled from school,” and shrugged._

 _“Right,” Reid nodded sagely. “Because anyone who’s written anything worth reading only ever graduated from college.”_

 _Luke rolled his eyes, knowing that Reid was right. But still, Reid valued education, had taken his own far and still published research papers and conducted studies. Luke would never admit it, but occasionally he felt so far out of his league up against Reid, a man over a decade his senior and years ahead of his education level, and so Luke sunk himself into his work, his foundation, his position on the hospital board and assured himself that a college degree did not a great man make. He just wondered, a few times, what Reid would think of such a statement, and considered sometimes whether he should go back to finish his degree, if only to make Reid less embarrassed of him._

 _“And really, as if… Oakdale U," he said with a dramatic wave of his hands. "Is the be all and end all of higher education.”_

 _“I know you’re making fun,” Luke said, smile trying desperately to tug at the corners of his mouth. “But it really is called Oakdale U.”_

 _“Seriously?”_

 _Luke nodded, stifled his smile at Reid’s look of disgust._

 _“This town, it just… hurts my soul sometimes with its quaintness. Ugh, even more reason to – there are other schools out there, Luke. Tons of ‘em if you want to go back, but if you want to write, why don’t you just – write?” Sounding not the least bit embarrassed by the prospect of a boyfriend only a handful of credits into his college education._

 _Luke couldn’t resist it anymore, and rose steadily from the bed to stride across the room and grab Reid by the tie – Luke loved ties – to pull him in and kiss him, trying to convey every ounce of light and warmth and strength he felt in the clutch of his hands in Reid’s hair and the press of his body against Reid’s and the touch of his tongue against Reid’s lips._

 _“Thank you,” he said as he pulled back, kept his hands laced in Reid’s hair._

 _Reid smiled, shrugged, and said, “I really do have to use the bathroom, though,” so Luke laughed and let him go._

He’s unsure of what to say, so he looks down at his hands and tries to think of something other than Reid.

“I…” he begins after several minutes of silence during which Dr. Kane had waited in patient silence. “I like to write.”

-

She suggests writing down some of his thoughts about Reid, trying to channel some of his grief into creativity, an outlet for his stress. He nods when she suggests it, not sure what he can write when there’s too much he wants to say, far, far too many words constantly swirling in his head to put down coherently on paper.

But he takes her suggestion to heart and goes up to his room when he gets home that evening, turns on the lamp over his desk, and pauses, his hand frozen on the drawer handle for several moments before working up the nerve to reach in, pull out the deep brown leather journal. A light sheet of dust coats the outside, untouched since Reid had given it to Luke the week before he died.

Luke sits as he holds the journal, sinks down into his chair and fingers the corners of the book carefully. Briefly he brings it up to his nose and inhales the aroma of soft leather, flips through to smell the fresh, unused pages, one of his favorite scents, but has to pull it away before the smell throws him back to that day in Reid’s bedroom and tears inevitably follow.

He flips to a page vaguely in the middle of the book and stares at the lines, mockingly empty. He hasn’t written a creative word in months, maybe longer, and his fingers begin to itch with it, but no lucid formation comes to mind.

 _I miss you,_

  
he writes, pencil flying over the page in a hurried scrawl.

He stares at the sentence for a long time. Then,

 _I’m sorry._

-

One afternoon he runs into Katie at Java and after a few moments of slightly awkward smiling and inane chit-chat, they sit down together and suddenly an hour has passed and Katie is looking at her watch with wide eyes and giving her apologies before rushing off back to work.

They run into each other at Java again several days later, same lunch break quick trips for coffee turning into an hour long conversation – about his work, about WOAK, about his parents rekindling their romance for yet another try, about Bob and Kim moving to Arizona. About Reid. It helps that she’s the only person around who will talk to him about Reid in a _god, he was annoyingly neat-freak-ish and I miss him terribly_ sort of way. It’s nice to be able to think of Reid, talk about Reid, and smile, even though it still makes his chest hurt.

They make their coffee dates a weekly occurrence, one that Luke finds himself looking forward to. He’s less and less resentful of her these days, though he only occasionally asks about her wedding plans, and appreciates that she only brings up Chris when Luke asks about him first.

-

“I dream about him a lot,” he tells Dr. Kane.

“That makes sense if you’re thinking about him frequently while you’re awake,” she replies, nodding. “What happens in your dreams?”

“Different things. Sometimes it’s about the accident. The train’s barreling down on him and I’m there too, but I can’t get him out and he’s trapped…” It’s hard to relate these things, images that his far too creative mind conjures up each night drawn easily back to his mind, and he has to close his eyes, regroup, before he continues.

“Sometimes everything’s normal, and he just walks through the door and he’s fine and tells me that it was all just a mistake and that he’s okay.”

She nods again, tilts her head as she considers him. “Is that something you think about? That he could somehow be alive?”

He wants to say no on impulse, but what comes out instead is a slight shrug and, “…Sometimes – I know it’s stupid and not true, it’s just… hard not to fantasize sometimes.”

She nods like that’s not a stupid, crazy thing to say.

“And you know,” he continues, a little bold now. “There’s been more than a few people around town who were presumed dead – grieving friends and relatives, funeral, everything – who turned up alive later and no one would’ve expected it at the time. My dad – we thought, we were _certain_ he’d been killed in the car accident last year, my mom even got remarried, we were so sure, and then boom, he walks back in the house one day. Hell, everyone thought _I_ was dead once when I’d been kidnapped by Damian.”

He stops speaking suddenly upon realizing how impassioned he’s gotten and how ludicrous he sounds, even though it’s all true. He’s just a bit too serious about this idea all of a sudden, giving a bit too much weight to barely a flicker of an idea that sits in the back of his mind and only ever gets consideration when he’s just woken from a dream and he lets his clumsy, sleep-addled mind wander.

“It’s stupid, though,” he says quickly. “I mean, I watched him – they told me he was brain dead, John and Bob, and they… harvested his organs…” The word “harvested” always makes Luke nauseous.

“I can understand how you’d consider that idea, that Reid could still be alive, considering that kind of history,” she says gently. “It must be comforting to hold on to that possibility.”

“My mom thought my dad was killed. A few times now,” he almost laughs at the absurdity of it all. “And she’s gotten him back each time.”

“Do you feel like it’s unfair that other people have come back after being thought dead, while you don’t get Reid back?”

He breathes out harshly through his nose and feels foolish when he answers quietly, “Yes.”

They’re both quiet for a few minutes and then Dr. Kane says, “I’m concerned that holding on too seriously to this possibility, though, might hurt you more in the long run. We need to work on accepting your loss, and I fear that this could prevent you from doing so, and from moving past it.”

 _Hopeless._

But he knows that she’s right. Reid’s not coming back, and it’s just his stupid subconscious that keeps suggesting that he might.

“You know that he’s gone,” she says, serious but not unkind.

Tears fall unexpectedly from his eyes and he lets them, doesn’t wipe them away.

“I know.” He sighs and looks down at his hands, feels the tears slide down his cheeks, thinks again about how the world has become so twisted and off to bring him to this point.

-

Chris turns down the Chief of Staff position. When he runs into Luke at Memorial and spills the news, it takes everything inside of him not to punch Chris in the face.

“Why?” he asks instead, imploring.

“I have a family now,” Chris tells him, hands in his pockets and shoulders a bit hunched, shielding himself from Luke’s obvious scorn. “I want to make sure I have enough time for them, and we’re planning a wedding, and… well, it’s just not the right time to take on a new position with all the extra hours and responsibilities.”

The anger building in Luke is ferocious, scares him with its intensity. _Relax,_ he tells himself as he stares at Chris’s chest and imagines that he can actually hear Reid’s heart beating beneath. _Calm down, relax, relax, relax._

He can’t find it in himself to say anything, because all that will come out is bitterness. All he can do is nod curtly and walk away, fast, from Chris before he explodes.

 _Stop it, stop it, don’t, be stronger than this,_ he thinks as he drives past the liquor store, same one he’d been to the last time he wanted to erase the fury and despair from his mind, and he turns the corner at the end of the block to sweep back around, drive past again. On his third trip around he stops, pulls the car into an open parking spot just down the street from the store, and watches the sky as gray storm clouds roll in.

He sits for a long time in the car. He waits for the rain to start. Thunder rolls somewhere in the distance. He wants a drink so badly he can already taste the heavy alcohol on his tongue.

 _Just one night. You can have it tonight and it’ll be better tomorrow._

But he knows better, knows that it won’t be, thinks of his grandmother asking him why he wants to die, thinks of Reid asking him about his favorite book.

 _“ Walden,” Luke told him. “Henry David Thoreau.”_

 _Reid raised his eyebrows, looked approving and surprised. Luke shrugged._

 _“I like his unwavering faith in humanity,” Luke replied. “And his prose is beautiful, it’s like…” he stopped to think on it a minute, looked away from Reid and off towards the boardroom they were walking towards at the end of the hallway. “…Musical,” he finished, hoping that didn’t sound too dopey._

 _He could almost feel Reid’s smile even without looking._

 _“Favorite food,” he prompted Reid._

 _“Right,” Reid snorted. “Ask your mom to choose her favorite child.”_

 _“Pick one,” Luke told him, laughing._

 _“Fine, if I_ must _choose,” Reid sighed dramatically. “Turkey club sandwich on whole wheat bread, extra tomatoes, iceberg lettuce, three slices of bread with honey mustard and mayo on alternating sides of each slice. Pickle on the side.”_

 _“I don’t think that’s a food so much as a meal,” Luke laughed brightly as they entered the boardroom. “But I’ll take it.”_

 _“Favorite movie,” Reid asked as they took their seats, their usual spots across the large table from one another. No one else would be there for at least several more minutes, so Luke stretched his arms up behind him, rested his hands folded together on top of his head._

 _“ The Goonies,” Luke replied easily, felt almost guilty about an admission he would never, ever make to Noah. Reid smiled at that and Luke wondered if he liked it too. He asked Reid, “Favorite song.”_

 _“‘Blackbird.’“_

 _Luke was mildly shocked. “The Beatles, really?”_

 _“Why?”_

 _“I don’t know,” Luke shrugged, thought about it for a minute. “I just kind of had you pegged for more of an mid-century jazz kind of person. A Coltrane man or Miles Davis or maybe some Thelonious Monk or something.”_

 _“Why’s that?” Reid looked amused, curious._

 _Luke had never really considered it, but the idea came to him as easily as if he had. “You just strike me as someone who’d like the smoothness of the music, the ordered beats within chaos - daring, but kind of structured improvisation. Kind of like you.”_

 _Reid looked pleased at that assessment, sat back in his chair and stared at Luke like he wanted either to jump Luke or just beam at him._

 _“You’re right on that, I do like jazz,” Reid said after a moment, tapped his pen against the notepad lying on the table in front of him. “I find it soothing. I used to listen to early Eric Dolphy recordings on endless loops while I studied in college, drove my roommate nuts. Thelonious Monk is usually reserved for the operating room.”_

 _Luke smiled, proud, happy to picture Reid in his scrubs, making careful, controled incisions in an operating room as “Ruby, My Dear” played in the background._

 _“Why ‘Blackbird’ then?” he asked._

 _“I appreciate the spirit of rebirth in the lyrics,” Reid replied, effortless, with a quirk of his head. “The push to rebuild and pick one’s self up, push through hardship, it’s very inspiring.”_

 _Luke was dumbfounded at that. “Really?”_

 _“No,” Reid replied, straightening up in his seat. Luke couldn’t help laughing, rolled his eyes._

 _“But it was the first and only song I was able to play on the guitar and impressed many a young, sexually confused man my junior year of high school.”_

 _“You play guitar?”_

 _“Like I said, just that one song. Realized at some point in high school that most teenagers are less than impressed by superior chess skills and wanted a hobby that might help get me laid.”_

 _“I find it_ really _hard to believe that Reid Oliver would resort to learning an instrument just to pick up guys,” Luke said with a speculative gaze, quirking smile. He tried to imagine teenage Reid, sitting up in his bedroom and practicing chord progressions over and over until he had them down perfectly._

 _“It was a phase,” Reid shrugged. “I stopped when I realized I was getting calluses on my fingers and that I could attract guys much more easily using simply my astounding wit and charm.”_

 _Luke shook his head and chuckled at that, was terribly annoyed when several other hospital board members began filtering into the room before he could have the chance to respond._

The rain never starts. The storm never draws closer than a thrum in the distance, and after an hour of sitting idly in his car, Luke changes gears with a shaking hand and pulls back out onto the street, drives home with a voice in his head all the while trying to convince him to turn around.

He pulls out his notebook when he gets home, breathes deep and shaky, writes,

 _Why did you have to give your heart to Chris?_


	4. November

Dr. Kane gives him a booklet with descriptions for several dozen different writing courses offered within a three hour radius of Oakdale. A few catch Luke’s eye, and there’s one short story course starting in early November and taught through the University of Chicago that Luke likes the sound of in particular. It takes him a full week of debate with himself, during which he hardly recognizes himself in the cycles of fear, self-consciousness, and apathy he goes through, and that’s what finally gives him the push to register, unable to continue on as any of those people anymore after months - longer, if he‘s really honest with himself, since long before Noah‘s accident - of being stuck in this emotional rut.

So two days a week he leaves work early and drives to Chicago, sits in a classroom with eighteen other writers of varying ages and skill level, gets assignments, and he lets his words fly across the pages. Once he starts he remembers how much he loves writing, creating, realizes how much he’s missed this, hand cramps and all.

He writes a lot about Noah - not always explicitly, but his first relationship, his first boyfriend, is inspiration behind many of his storylines and several characters. Perhaps repetitive, but it helps him to exorcise some demons that he’d never really had the chance to deal with in moving so quickly from one relationship to another. It clears his head, makes him feel a bit more at peace with the ghost of his relationship with Noah to relive, reexamine where they began to separate from one another.

He never writes about Reid, at least not for class. He’s gained more acceptance of his emotions over the last few weeks, less volatility, but they’re still too much of a jumbling mess to commit to paper for anyone else‘s eyes, and for now Reid is his alone, not to be used as fodder for his creativity. His words for Reid tumble out in his therapy sessions, in coffee dates with Katie, in messy scrawl throughout random pages of his notebook in the privacy of his bedroom.

_The leaves are amazing around here this time of year. Did you like autumn?  
~  
At least you knew that I loved you. You’d better not have ever doubted that as you sat in that car or laid in that bed, but I know you didn’t. You were loved, so even though it’s no saving the world, giving someone their sight back, it’s something, right? You must have been full enough of yourself to know that you’d be loved as soon as you let me.  
~  
I want to go back to that hotel room in Dallas and fuck you right there on that bed in the middle of the room. Noah’s eyes could have waited one more day. I hate regrets.  
~  
Chris is a gigantic douchnozzle. I hope Katie dumps him.  
~  
Wrote about four thousand words yesterday. Not in one sitting, but still a lot for one day. Why aren’t you here?  
~  
Tired today. Wanted to know what it’d feel like to sleep with your arms around me.   
~  
You weren’t always fearless._

He has a late dinner one night with a guy from his class, Jeremy, after they’ve finished up. Luke’s pretty sure that Jeremy’s straight, though it doesn’t matter much - he’s not sure he could handle even the idea of dating right now, or for a long time, probably - but the guy’s nice and tells really bad jokes and they spend the meal riffing on their teacher’s bad comb over and tweed jacket, and discussing the use of magical realism in modern literature. It’s nice to talk so easily to someone else his own age, to joke and have dinner with someone without any pressure, no expectations of him. He hasn’t made a new friend in a long time, and he’s surprised at how easy it is once he lets himself.

-

Late November sees him smiling a little easier.

-

Thanksgiving is nice, if a bit more subdued than usual. Luke has always felt his most comfortable when surrounded by family, but this year the dinner table feels a bit more claustrophobic than he’s used to. Noah doesn’t come back to town, despite requests by Luke and his parents. In truth, he and Noah haven’t been in such close contact recently, their exchange of emails turning sporadic since Noah started work, and Luke isn’t really bothered by it. Noah’s busy integrating himself into his new life, and Luke is busy… he’s never entirely certain. Trying to keep his life from flying totally off the rails. Trying to build his life. Or something.

He’s better. He’s getting better. It’s strange to think of loss as some disease that can be treated and cured, but when he tries to compare his state of mind three months following Reid’s death to what it was like right after, all he can think is _I’m better. It’s getting better,_ even if he still feels awkward and disjointed as he glances around the dinner table to take stock of how most everyone save his little brother, little sister, and grandma are happily paired off.

He skips his turn when they go around the table to say what they’re thankful for this year.


	5. December

“So, okay,” Katie says as she smoothes long locks of hair out of her face and then folds her hands together on the table between herself and Luke. “Can we please talk for a minute about Parker and Faith?”

“Oh god,” Luke groans, scrubs at his face in all due put upon manor. “Please, don’t remind me, it’s _so_ bizarre.”

“So they’re really serious, huh?” Katie leans forward and whispers it conspiratorially, smile hinting at her face.

“Seems like, yeah,” Luke replies with a shake of his head. “She won’t talk to me about it, though. Anytime I ask her about Parker she huffs and puffs and tosses her hair and flounces out of the room.” He rolls his eyes, sighs, “I really miss her being a little kid.”

Katie laughs at that. “Yeah well, I’m not too surprised she doesn’t want to talk about her love life with her older brother.”

“Don’t!” Luke throws a hand up dramatically. “Don’t say that, don’t say ‘love life’ in relation to my little sister, especially when she’s dating our _cousin._ Ew.”

“It’s not too bad though, I guess,” Katie says reasonably. A head tilt lets her hair fall back into her face, and she brushes it away again. “You guys are only second cousins - or something… what exactly are you guys?”

“I’m not actually sure, but I usually just go with second cousins.”

“Okay, so, second cousins, and Parker’s not biologically Jack’s son anyway, so there’s no blood relation.”

“Still,” Luke shakes his head again, both hands waving about dramatically. “It’s weird. We were all raised as family, they were raised like cousins. They took baths together when they were kids! It’s _weird_ ,” he declares with a nod and folds his arms against his chest.

“Shocking that she wouldn’t want to talk to you about it, then,” Katie laughs at him.

“I’d never say any of that to _her_ ,” Luke replies, and means it. He seems to be the only one around who finds it the least bit odd that Faith and Parker dating despite the fact that they’ve grown up being told that they were cousins, whatever blood runs through their veins - it’d be like him going for Aaron, just because they don’t biologically share the same parents. But he’d never say any of that to Faith, especially not when she seems actually kind of _happy_ for the first time in a long while. He’s just kind of hoping that whatever is between her and Parker will peter out, and the sooner the better.

He says as much to Katie, as well as, “They’re family, ultimately, and what if something goes wrong and they have a bad breakup? They’re going to be in each other’s lives forever, it can’t be good to mix…romance, or whatever, with that.”

“You can’t choose who you fall for, though,” Katie says. “What if they don’t break up? What if the love of your life or soul mate or whatever happens to be your…” she trails off and flails her hands a bit, searching for words. “…Non-blood-related second cousin?”

Luke snorts a laugh and gives a dismissive wave of the hand at that. “I need to give this relationship at least a few more weeks before I’m willing to believe any big declarations like that. And I don’t even think I believe in that stuff anyway. ‘Love of your life’ or whatever.”

“Really?” Katie cocks her head to the side. Light glints off of the brand new engagement ring that adorns her finger as she reaches for her coffee cup. “I always had you pegged for a romantic.”

Luke shrugs and slumps a little in his chair. “Yeah, the idea‘s nice and all, but c’mon, soul mate? Love of your life? How many people do you actually know that have spent their whole life with just one person? My dad alone has gone through at least three of those _loves of his life_.”

Katie rolls her eyes good naturedly. “Oh god, I hate such romantic cynicism.”

That word bothers him, but he pushes on speaking with little pause, says, “Oh come on, you should know what I‘m saying. You were in love with Brad, he was the love of your life, and now you’re with Chris, and…”

He realizes what he’s said just about thirty seconds too late, sees the sting of his words hit Katie as her eyes widen and her grin falters, and he closes his eyes, hates himself immediately.

“I’m sorry, Katie, that was - I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” she says, doesn’t sound hurt, but he can’t look at her for a moment.

“I hate cynicism too,” he goes on, contrite and feeling hurt himself. “I don’t mean to say stuff like that, it just came out - ”

“Luke,” she says gently, rests a hand against one of his own. She waits until he opens his eyes to look at her. “I know. It’s okay.” She shakes her head a little for emphasis, squeezes his hand, and out of nowhere tears have formed in his eyes.

“Every time I think I’m getting past it…” Luke’s voice wavers. A sad laugh bubbles up in his throat for no particular reason. “There’s always something that just pops up and makes me think of him and it,” he shakes his head and whispers, “breaks my heart all over again. I should be over this, right? We weren’t even together all that long, but I can’t - ”

Katie shakes his hand against the table, rubs a finger over his knuckles. “I know how it feels. Doesn’t matter how long you were together, you don’t just get over someone you loved just like that. But I promise, it'll get better.”

“When?” he struggles out. Tears drip past his nose, run down over his lips.

She shakes her head, says, “I don’t think there’s a time limit for these things. Even now, it’s been a year since Brad, and I’m with Chris and I’m _happy_ with Chris, but even so, sometimes I still have these moments where I miss Brad so much I feel like I can’t breathe.”

And something about hearing her, like talking to a survivor of the same disease he’s been inflicted with, helps.

“I just want to feel normal again,” he says, wiping at his eyes with his free hand.

“Sometimes I think it’s like learning to walk with a limp,” she says like she really has thought about this a lot. “Like you’ll never really walk the way you did before, but you can learn to live with it, figure out a new way to go forward.”

Neither of them speaks for a long time. Katie strokes Luke’s hand and lets him shed his tears, cries along with him a bit and shows no trace of embarrassment at weeping openly in the middle of a busy coffee shop.

Eventually Luke smiles a terrible, wet thing, and says, “You should write a self-help book or something,” to break up the moment.

“Yeah,” she laughs derisively, brushes hair out of her face again. “Coping with Ironic or Poorly Timed Death. Reid would make so much fun of me.”

Luke laughs through his tears.

-

He goes to a basketball game with Jeremy. He takes Natalie and Ethan sledding. He has coffee with Katie. He watches snow fall. Most of the time he actually means it when he laughs.

-

Luke hadn’t been looking forward to Christmas. At all. As a child it was his favorite holiday - he loved the warmth and the family together and the singing and the excitement. And the presents, but that was far down on his list, even as a kid.

The last few years of holidays have been difficult at best; last year’s Christmas in particular felt crushingly sad and lonely, and Luke had been counting on this year being a mirrored repeat.

Somehow, it’s not. They spend the holiday at the farm and his father dresses up as Santa on Christmas Eve, much to Ethan’s shrieking delight. His mother makes hot chocolate, his grandma makes cookies for the kids to leave out when they go off to bed, and they sit in the living room together as a family with no tension, no anger, no secrets for the first time in what feels like forever. Even Faith is quiet and happy, with easy smiles lighting up her face as she leans against their mother on the couch. Natalie falls asleep on Luke’s arm and Ethan protests his bedtime and nothing big or outlandish or exciting happens, but Luke feels calm and okay like he hasn’t in months.

Sitting with his family, surrounded by colorful lights and the familiar scent of evergreen, Luke misses Reid so fiercely and what would’ve been his first chance to envelop the once solitary man in a real Snyder family holiday. But the pain isn’t so sharp and debilitating anymore, rather more a dull ache settled unmoving in his chest that feels almost comforting in its familiarity now, like he can feel Reid with each throb in his heart.

He thinks about his journal, pen tucked inside for easy access, at the bottom of his overnight bag, here with him at the farm, and Reid’s lab coat, hung up carefully in his bedroom closet, next to his own dress shirts and suit jackets and there each morning as he gets dressed for work, and Reid’s stethoscope stored carefully in the back of his desk drawer in his office, rarely viewed for the lump it brings to his throat, but comforting to know that it’s there. There are reminders of Reid everywhere around him, but they’ve become more comfort than painful, somehow. He feels warm even in his sadness, different now than a month or two ago when he was so desperate to escape his crushing, overwhelming despair, feels a bit more now like this feeling really is simply the other side of happiness, and he can get that back someday.

He falls asleep on the couch in front of the tree, vaguely feels someone tuck a blanket around him as he drifts off, and when he dreams tonight it’s of Reid sitting there with him, their fingers laced together and a soft smile on Reid’s face that says, _I’m okay,_ and when Luke wakes he believes it.

-

Two days after the new year - rung in quietly, kind of pathetically, with sparkling cider in a champagne flute and his little brother fallen asleep in his lap - Luke comes home early from work so he can dash inside, grab his latest writing sample from his desk, forgotten in his rush out the door this morning.

He grabs the mail on his way inside, spares a quick glance as he flips through the envelopes - bill for mom, bill for him, free sample of something, advertisement for something, bill for mom - when, with only half an eye on the mail as he drops his bag on the floor and loosens his tie, scans the room to check if his mom is home, he spots a while envelope with his name on it.

There’s no return address, no stamp on it, and his own address isn’t even written out. Just _Luke Snyder_ in wide, looping script across the front, and Luke stops walking across the living room, puts the rest of the mail down. His eyebrows knit together as he turns the envelope over, slides a finger beneath the sealed flap to tear it open.

It’s only one sentence, two words, typewritten in an ordinary, mid-size font in the middle of the page, and Luke’s hands begin to shake furiously. He drops his keys, listens to them thump, distantly, to the floor. No signature on the page, it could mean anything, _anything_ , and logically he knows that he shouldn’t jump to any conclusions, but something in him _knows_. He swallows, grips the page in hands that have balled into fists.

He reads the words again, again and again, mind frozen, legs unable to move.

**_HE’S ALIVE._ **


End file.
